


Connectivity Error

by bopeep, curious_werewolf



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Hackers, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, An English Major Wrote This, Inaccurate Tech Terms, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Vigilante Justice, minor tech body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 15:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11255940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bopeep/pseuds/bopeep, https://archiveofourown.org/users/curious_werewolf/pseuds/curious_werewolf
Summary: Steve Rogers is falling apart, and together with best friend and fellow freelance hacker Bucky Barnes he intends to fight the injustices of the cyber plane and make a little money doing it in order to fix up the literal and figurative broken pieces that make up their lives. When solicited by SHIELD to take on a dangerous mission, Steve and Bucky find the hard way that they don't exactly have nothing to lose.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was an absolute joy to write, based on artwork by the endlessly talented and so very patient and caring curious_werewolf for the Stucky Reverse Bang 2017! Thank you so much for everything <3 
> 
> Please pretend this is how computers work.

 

  
art by curious-werewolf ([hi-res](http://i.imgur.com/dasvEXe.jpg))

* * *

 

It wasn't so much that he didn't fit in, but that James didn't much care to. 

His classmates would huddle in cliquey chats and homework circles in the virtual community lounge, throwing emojis at each other and flirting as far as the language restrictions would allow, little electric pulses surging between avatars somehow even worse, even stickier than their actual hormones. Physically, in real time, the classroom was silent save for the occasional tapping on displays from three neat lines of students connected to visors and screens, but within that digital plane things were loud, bright, and fast. Each appeared the way they saw themselves, character avatars fully customizeable and often nothing like the real teens on the other side of the connection. It was an exercise in expression, ego, and that crippling self-loathing of adolescence that hovered in every high school since history could recall.

Technically, gambling was not allowed on these school computer systems. Still, James Barnes plugged in and wandered away from the gabbing hordes, shuffling morose and solitary. He found himself a children’s game, one more or less centered on popping bubbles, and sat in the corner idly jabbing at the rainbow spheres while externally he poked through the code. At school, James typically managed to pull apart one or two pay-to-play games in the forty-five minutes allotted to home room’s free browsing time. It wasn’t often a challenge; he knew where to dig his fingers into the weave of its make-up, where to apply pressure, how to exploit lazy programmers and pull the strings to his own designs like cat’s cradle. Children and bored adults from all over the world popped in and out of game rooms with credits to spare and James was able to weasel a few here and there from the interface to fund his own play; casual gamers were not hyper-aware of a single credit more or less in their accounts, and certainly weren’t expecting to deal with pickpockets in such a tame and low-stakes environment. James preferred to target systems rather than individual humans, but he wasn’t picky.  
  
He appeared totally inconspicuous under a fake “Anonymous User” tag rather than his actual connection alias, “Bucky.” Child-sized avatars of “Pegasus_2035” and “Swizzle,” wearing the ever-popular fuzzy cat and dog ears that indicated their status as minors, asked him if he wanted to play with them (brave, he thought, as his avatar did not look friendly,) and he waved them away. He popped at more bubbles and idly noticed as a few minutes later, the kids ran past him screaming and disappeared from the room. Bullies, he suspected, and he was right. From his corner in the bubble room, he could hear a couple of jokers laughing and breaking pieces of the environment. Bucky idly wondered if they had any money he could tease away from their profiles but decided against it, popping bubbles and minding his own business as his points climbed impossibly higher with the aid of his code tweaks. His avatar sat inconspicuous in default blacks, a sort of backstage shorthand for anonymity preferred by users from the generic gamer all the way up to professional hackers. Nobody bothered him, his lithe avatar looking just short of a Casual Friday Dominatrix lurking about the deep net. The body, the expression, the visual impact was pointedly neutral if not a little frightening, anywhere between age 20 and 50 and wholly androgynous, a black bandana obscuring the lower half of his face entirely. He crafted his avatar specifically with this in mind. Not that he ever needed it, but he wanted to be totally forgettable if anyone needed to remember his face.

And if clothes are said to make the man, James knew entirely too quickly that user “Button” with its ridiculous avatar was trouble when they logged on. This guy was a neon sign in the desert, and James was certain there was a non-zero chance of having to break up a tussle as Button blasted through that pack of bullies plaguing the game room. They were goons, nobody’s babies, scraping together the kind of fun that meant other people couldn’t have it. Younger users signed out in droves, found other rooms to play. James hated players like this; they ruined the experience (and though he was doubly aware he, too, was breaking a couple of laws, he held himself to a particular standard that obviously included never stealing from a child if he could help it.) Bless them, their avatars looked like cartoon villains, characters bulked out to an ugly extreme with devil horns and animal mods that turned them into vaguely mythological uglies. James remained in his corner, unmoved by their displays. The room was quiet without the younger gamers and the enthusiasm that typically accompanied their virgin voyages into the common space of the internet. James regretted their ruined fun but made no move to confront the gang or the loudmouth circus performer who was taking them on single-handedly. He continued to pop bubbles and rack up credits he could use later for bigger hauls.

But user Button launched into high gear, and started pulling them apart string by string.

“This is a community,” Button barked, the threat echoing in the room. James stopped popping bubbles and turned to watch. The largest avatar among them lifted Button by the collar as the brightly-colored firebrand began to glitch out. Button took a swing at him and landed it squarely, only to be tossed, solidly, into a glowing boundary wall that swooned on impact, landing in James’s lap. The avatar was male, a strong and solid American Jock type, totally human and wearing brightly colored spandex like a comic book character. His user profile was nothing but a name, and the name “Button” did not suit him for a minute. In a world where you could fully customize your appearance as a matter of course, James had a lot a questions about this guy’s choices, but at the moment his first was why Button hadn’t immediately jumped out of his arms. The moment lingered to say the least. 

“Sorry, Johnny Cash,” Button chirped and rolled off him, dodging a piece of environment that came hurtling at him. James didn’t see it coming and the disruption ended his game round, erasing his credits. Angrily he got up and turned to the three hostiles, Button recovering and twitching to maintain his apparently weak connection just behind him. James stood between them.  

“The hell is your problem?” He had the courtesy to ask but did not wait for an answer; the goons were not hard-connected like he was, physically, in their school homeroom, and it didn’t take much for him to boot them clear from the room, ripping at their network tendons which had been sloppily maintained (lazy fuckin’ teens, he thought,) with three sharp, pointed blows. The thugs disappeared and Button hazily got to his feet, a sloppy smile on his avatar’s face.

“I didn’t think you cut code,” he said. “You don’t look like a cyberlancer.”

“Says the rainbow scuba diver,” James sighed, pulling down the black handkerchief from over his mouth. “I know my way around. I don’t usually make a point of using it for trouble,” James said pointedly. “You a mercenary? Somebody paid you for that intercession?” He asked, wondering if the guy was the game’s security procedure, if he should cut his losses and run before he realized James had been stealing. He certainly looked like he could be part of a children’s game, after all. Button laughed, shaking his head as his connection lag left his facial features frozen for a moment.  

“Pro-bono justice,” he said. James looked at him levelly, about to tell him how his mother always said those looking for trouble will surely make what they can’t find, when the walls suddenly flashed red and went dormant. The two avatars turned to each other in shock: somebody had flagged the room and got them shut down. In a matter of moments a security code would fire, their profiles would be scanned, marked for misconduct, and their connection would get suspended. Internet security in public places was slow and inefficient but when it worked, it was a real headache.

“Cowards reported us,” James hissed. “We shouldn’t have stayed.” Though James was only mildly irritated, Button was in a panic. 

“Are you in public? Outside, are you on a public line?” He quickly asked, looking around desperately. James sighed. It was an inconvenience to be suspended from the grid while he was at school: red mark next to your name on the class roster for twenty-four hours. Two red marks and your access was restricted. Three and you had to sit down with your administrator.  

“Kind of,” he replied. “I’m at school.” Button put a hand on his shoulder, gripping tensely.  

“Kick me out,” he said, his voice strong and low. James frowned.

“What?”

“Kick me out of the room; I just saw you do it. Please, I’m buggy and if I get another suspension I have to go through diagnostics and I can’t drop out,” Button pleaded. “Please.” James stared for a second before executing the same lines on Button that had booted the thugs. He stood alone in the flashing red room for a moment before he was suspended, and opened his eyes to a blank screen in the classroom. He unplugged, irritated. He looked down the row of student users, connected in various stages via visor to glowing projection panels, and stood up. He would have to wait for the admin to issue another entrance code but she liked him and he liked his odds.

“Hi, ANGIE,” he said with as much sunshine as he could muster. The master screen at the front of the classroom flickered out of sleep mode and a woman appeared, the Artificial Neuro-Glass Interspatial Educator that served as proctor for their free time in homeroom. She processed his face and frowned immediately.

“James Buchanan, you are not to be loitering in public gaming forums!” She said, folding her arms. “Or using real money!”

“But I’m saving up for our honeymoon in Cabo, ANGIE,” he replied with a smile. She processed the charm and flustered slightly. James found that he could escape all sorts of punishment when he used the right tone of voice. “When are you gonna let me make an honest program of you?”

“You know school rules. No gambling, no hacking, no illegal activity, sweetheart, in case you have forgotten,” she said, pulling up the list of regulations and the waiver that James had signed promising to follow them. “Why’d you get red boxed, honey?”

“Got in a little scuffle,” James said, waving dismissively. “Don’t worry, ANGIE, you should see the other guys.”

“You’ve got fifteen minutes of homeroom left so it’s not worth me issuing a new key with permissions, sweetie. Just sit tight and do homework, please. And you,” Angie peered around James, who did not even notice the quiet, emaciated little fellow behind him, “did you get red-boxed, too, Steven Grant?” The boy shook his head, blue eyes wide and innocent. If Bucky had to guess, he was maybe 70 percent android hardware, from what he could see, and none of it looked particularly stable. He was a real mess of a hybrid boy.

“No, ma’am. Just booted by a good samaritan. The older guys pick on me in there,” he said with an overdrawn sort of puppy look that ANGIE seemed to eat up with a spoon. James knew her empathy programming was through the roof, but was not aware that anyone else knew to exploit it. If that wasn’t enough to pique his curiosity, the smaller boy had a dead-ringer voice match for the ridiculous anti-bully campaign in spandex that just got him in trouble.

“Steven, you poor little bear,” ANGIE cooed. James narrowed his eyes as the boy looked up at the display through long lashes. “Good thing you didn’t get another red box. One more suspension and you’d be in a spot of trouble, mister,” she said. “Why don’t you and James sit down at the tables and wait for dismissal? Please limit your aggressive interactions on the student servers, if possible, and stay out of community rooms that are prone to volatility,” she said, and went back into power-saving. James turned around to Steve, who swam in the school-issued uniform just shy of his line of vision.

“Just booted, huh?” He said, suspicion growing. “A good Samaritan?”

“Yeah,” Steve replied, squaring up. James had a few inches on him in all directions but you wouldn’t know it from Steve’s demeanor. They’d been in homeroom together all year and only now were speaking one on one, though that wasn’t surprising. James had only superficial friendships, easy and worthless, and Steve attracted the wrong kind of attention more often than not. James quirked an eyebrow, remembering the bulky, superhero avatar the guy wore online. His bright eyes and big attitude all but compensated in reality. He repeated himself. “A good Samaritan.”

“A fall guy, you mean,” James pointed out, hitching his backpack over his shoulders. His specs were made visible as the sleeve of his uniform rode up with the straps and Steve couldn’t help but peek at the ports there, ports that had up until moments ago connected him via a physical wire to the virtual grid.

“There’s a romantic joke there about falling that I’m not going to touch,” Steve said idly, getting closer to James in order to get a read on his parts better. “You’re hardwired?” He asked, suppressing something of excitement. “I thought everyone in our class was wireless.”

“Yeah, no, not me,” James shrugged. “The kind of gaming I do is easier on old and custom mechanics. I’m a traditionalist, I guess.”

“You sure are, Johnny Cash.” Steve smirked up at him as they walked together to a corner table that was always empty, one reserved for kids who were not connected, lovingly referred to as “time out” by the students. The surface glowed faintly in a dormant work-station state.

“Small fuckin’ digital world, it _is_ you,” James sighed. “I wondered. Does Button always rely on the kindness of strangers to get out of shit he starts?” He asked, sliding into a chair opposite his apparent partner in crime.

“Button goes by Steve out here,” the other said pointedly, “and Button is a survivalist so yeah, he relies on and believes in a certain level of inherent goodness in others. Unlike you, I’ll wager.”

“Why’s that?”

“I noticed you don’t even display your handle publicly,” Steve said with a raised eyebrow, “ _Bucky_.” The name tripped off his tongue with percussive flair. James had only ever called himself that in private; even at home his ma called him Jamie. Steve invoked it like a spell and a piece of it belonged to him now. “That’s about as twee and unsuspecting as mine. Bucky and Button sounds like an adventure duo from a children’s book. Probably mice with hats.”

“Well, you are a little rat,” James conceded, almost affectionate towards the kid’s sleuthing. “When did you dig that out of my profile?”

“Somewhere between when I watched you steal a hundred credits from thin air and when I got clotheslined by one of those big ugly doofs,” Steve said levelly. Bucky froze. “Didn’t think you could make that kind of money on a public screen-saver game but I’m really impressed. If I made money like that, I could fix up some of my--- everything,” Steve laughed and absently flicked at an exposed copper wire coming from a shoddy little board behind his ear. Bucky calmed a bit, hoping there was some honor among thieves.

“So why don’t you? If you break codes, why don’t you?”

“Not my style,” Steve waved off the idea. “Button does a lot of smashing and not a lot of grabbing. I don’t know as many tricks as you, Buck, otherwise I might be able to extract myself without getting so many red boxes,” he said, referring to the state of a room when it had been security flagged prior to suspension. Steve began to idly doodle on the table-top screen. Bucky watched him.

“You pull that shit a lot?”

“I pull that shit a lot. You might call it a hobby,” the smaller boy said with a smile. “Or over-compensating.”

“Is Button a little computer joke or something? Since you’re mostly ‘droid?” Bucky asked. Steve glanced up at him quickly.

“I guess it could be,” Steve shrugged, “but honestly no. Named after Button Gwinnett. And when you’re born as broken as I was and all the medical answers are mechanical, then yeah, you’re part droid and it isn’t by choice.” His tone clipped just so and Bucky nodded, catching his tongue between his teeth and wishing he’d known to be a bit more sensitive to Steve’s condition. Bucky had elected to have older, well-integrated systems because he preferred them. He could afford compatible refurbed pieces to replace the expensive wireless systems his parents had bought for him and his siblings. By lottery of birth, many did not have such plush options and Bucky immediately regretted pointing it out.

“Right, of course. Button Gwinnett. The, uh, circus clown, I’m sure, right?” He offered arbitrarily, backpedaling to humor as best as he could.

“Close. Signer of the Declaration of Independence,” Steve said, looking up at him with a tired eye roll.

“Fuckin’ nerd. Never heard of him,” Bucky said. He folded his arms defensively. The smaller boy considered him for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to engage. But the challenge couldn’t go unanswered, and Bucky knew it. Steve huffed.

“Button Gwinnett was a founding father but he managed to leave almost no paper trail. His signature on any other piece of paper, just--- receipt, kid’s birthday card, anything--- is worth more than George Washington’s. It’s nearly impossible to get your hands on any trace of him.” He blew a stray piece of hair from his forehead, a rebellious blonde wisp.

“Ah. Up in smoke. Your idol,” Bucky said, keeping a smile at bay. Steve glanced at the rest of his classmates, swept up in the internet world that existed just beyond vision. They sat stock still, brains sending signals wirelessly through implant chips without the necessary wiring the Steve required and Bucky preferred; it was common practice now for children to go wireless as soon as they were old enough to access the internet. It was not, however, a free provision nor a citizen’s right, and tech companies were highly aware of obsolescence as a profit tool, upgrading systems right and left and leaving behind those who could not afford to keep up. It struck Bucky that perhaps Steve was one such human, whose tech was old and patchwork not by choice but by necessity, financial or medical or both.

“In that posthumous regard, yeah, that part of his legacy is great. Otherwise all those colonist guys were dicks in one way or another. Humans are a mess. Code is simple,” he said, lovingly patting the projection screen embedded in the table, older tech by a couple of years that had since been relegated to pure furniture, “and much easier to hide in.”

“If it’s so easy for you to hide, how come you got destroyed in there?” Bucky asked bluntly. Steve chewed on his bottom lip, gesticulating as he explained 

“I need to physically interact in order to get source information. I’m not good at poking around from afar, like you seem to be, Mr. fuckin’ invisible pickpocket sniper like the Artful Dodger without anybody even noticing,” he grinned and Bucky almost blushed. “I’ve been following those dudes for a couple of days. I was hoping to shut them down tonight if I could get to a cafe and corner them somewhere but honestly, I think between the two of us we picked them apart pretty hard. They’ll be licking those wounds for a good while. I might go home and read a book or something, shoot. All this free time,” Steve marveled.

“You do that bully busting shit from cafes?” Bucky gawked. “That’s risky, isn’t it?” Using a public space like a cybercafe for any illegal doing wasn’t strictly unheard of, as the connections were heavily traveled and provided a vaguely decent cover if you relied on anonymous crowds but no protection whatsoever from trackers, bugs, advertisements, or worse. Steve shrugged, sweet smile halfway smug. Bucky tripped over his own admission of ‘sweet’ and shook the thought.

“I try to slip under the radar. Doesn’t hurt that my real life persona looks like I accidentally wandered away from Club Penguin,” he explained. “Of course, some assholes hone in on that. Love to pick on the little guy.”

“I noticed. You don’t know how to pick your battles.”

“Sure I do. I just pick all of them.”

“Can’t just stick to the important ones?”

“There wouldn’t be a fight if it wasn’t important, Bucky,” Steve replied, smiling down into the projection of a little dog he had doodled. “Do I get to ask _you_ where that name came from?”

“Middle name’s Buchanan.” 

“That’s it?” Steve asked, watching his face for a lie. Bucky shrugged and something honest struck Steve clear and strong like a tiny silver bell: he liked him. “Boring but cute.” 

“Just like me,” Bucky said with a wink. Steve choked on a laugh and coughed into his sleeve. Bucky couldn’t help the reflexive twist in his own lungs. “You alright?”

“Cheap parts and bugs.” Steve shrugged it off. “There’s only so much you can fix when you’re inherently broken. And broke.” It occurred to Bucky that there were some things you couldn’t hack your way into; one of them was physical health. Early body tech and custom hardwire builds like his were harder to upkeep, in spite of their agility in the deeper networks, and weren’t always effortlessly compatible with the human body, especially if it wasn’t in peak condition to begin with. From the looks of him, Steve wasn’t particularly healthy. Veins and wiring protruding from skinny arms, incision scars here and there. His entire right earpiece connected with what looked to be LED watch parts if he didn’t know any better. “But hey, you ever hear of a programmer named Erskine?”

“No,” Bucky said, though he was caught staring. Steve grinned. 

“Tech doc. He came in on the ground floor with the android apps twenty years ago with Stark but went off the reservation, just wildcard inventing and postulating. He’s been--- I’ve been kind of watching him. He has a little community, and he vids about upgrades for old wires like mine,” Steve said, gesturing to the shoddy connectors on his left shoulder. “He’s brilliant. His whole thing is about improving present tech instead of leaving it behind so like, we don’t get swept under and obsolete. I think he’s going to be the one to come up with something for us manual connections, to be better and stronger. Upgrades.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky said with some dwindling enthusiasm. Erskine sounded like a quack if he was honest, but Steve was all stars and hearts talking about him. Bucky filed away the name for later. “You ever think about applying to join SHIELD when we graduate? Go into web security?”

“They won’t take me,” Steve groused. “Too many bugs, too much of a liability. I’ve tried patches and pseuds and I get kicked out of the clearance check every time. I’d kill to join SHIELD.” Bucky could hear the hurt behind the wall.

“Sounds like it would be a natural fit for you, Mr. Crusade.”

“Yeah, well. Not in the cards. Maybe someday. More likely to get arrested and forced into state servitude and even then, they’d stick me behind a desk. But until then,” he said, cracking his knuckles dramatically, “vigilante justice.”

“That why you wear that ridiculous avatar?”

“Okay, first of all, that look is very striking,” Steve said, straightening in his seat and sticking his tongue out. “Second of all, at least I didn’t just finish a performance at Folsom Prison, okay? I happen to like getting into character.”

“Whatever, Button.” 

They sat next to each other every day that followed. Bucky eventually made a point of splitting time between the petty credit theft that sponsored his gaming addiction and following Steve around, just to make sure he wasn’t getting into scrapes bigger than he could handle. Eventually Steve was coming by the Barnes house regularly to connect via Bucky’s mom’s protected line, the two of them an easy and inseparable team. Steve was steadfast and bold, making tactical maneuvers that Bucky would never attempt, and Bucky was refined and precise in his code breaking, the sniper behind Steve’s brash break-ins.

“I don’t need you to white knight for me all the time,” Steve groused, disconnecting one afternoon just before dismissal. “I had that last one on the ropes.” Bucky detached his own cable, winding it idly in a coil.

“I know you did. I just like to see you get frustrated,” he said. “Probably the only thing that brings me joy.”

“That’s sick. You should talk to a therapist.”

“ANGIE’s my guidance counselor.” 

“She is? No fucking wonder,” Steve laughed.

“She understands me.” 

“It’s a miracle she even passes the Total Turing Test, Buck,” Steve laughed.

“She loves me,” Bucky smiled. Steve picked up the coat Bucky was about to leave behind; he was constantly leaving things behind and Steve now mindlessly picked up little pieces wherever they went. Bucky suddenly realized he’d forgot it as they reached the classroom door and turned only to find Steve holding the leather jacket out for him. “Thank you.”

“It’s in her programming to love you,” Steve brushed it off. Bucky looked at him sideways.

“Is that jealousy?” 

“Don't worry, I would never ask you to love anyone as much as you love a projected hologram of a beautiful woman that calls you sweetheart,” Steve joked.

“You’re welcome to call me sweetheart anytime you want, babe,” Bucky smirked. “Hey, reminds me. You should come over for dinner. My mom’s getting bored with our Nourish allotment and she keeps futzing with the flavors. She loves feeding you,” Bucky added hastily, in case his intentions weren’t clear after indirectly asking Steve to call him ‘sweetheart.’ Steve sighed heavily.

“I’m not feeling so hot, I think I need to reboot tonight,” he said, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably, an improper click and snap following. Bucky winced.

“Not feeling so hot like how?”

“Why do you have to know? You’re not a doctor. Or a mechanic,” Steve huffed. Bucky swung his coat over his shoulder, an attempt at cool that hopefully read better than it felt.  

“I just wish I could help, is all.” 

“It’s fine,” Steve assured him, though it was a mantra rather than a reality. “As soon as Dr. Erskine’s patents go public, I’m going to be healthy as a horse. You’ll see. I’ll look like a tank.”

“You’ll always be cute as a _button_ to me no matter how small you stay,” Bucky said with a grin, “but healthy as a horse takes top priority.”

“A boy can dream,” Steve said, wiping his nose. A streak of oil followed across his upper lip like a mustache. “God, I’m leaking from everywhere.” Bucky coughed involuntarily. “What?”

“Gonna pretend I didn’t extrapolate on that immediately."

“You’re gross,” Steve groused. Bucky shrugged.

“You’re falling apart.”

“My body can be fixed. You’ll always be gross.”

“All you do is hurt my feelings,” Bucky laughed. “How are we even friends?”

“Are we friends?” Steve asked, grinning lopsidedly up at him as they stood shoulder to shoulder at the computer lab’s exit waiting on dismissal.

“My mother brought an extra chair to the table permanently. If you’re not my friend you owe her an apology.”

“I accept the terms of your friendship.”

“Terms?” Bucky repeated. “You sure you’re not all bot in there?” He playfully knocked on Steve’s shoulder as if it would make a metal clang.

“I wish,” Steve grinned. “Someday." 

“Hey, how about I come over by you? I can hang out with you while you recharge if you want,” Bucky offered. “Do your homework for you or something, huh? Good deal?” Steve winced.

“No. That’s okay.”

“How come you never let me see your place?” Bucky asked, but the dismissal sounded and Steve was already on his way out the door in the throng of kids, not bothering to wait up for Bucky. He stood for a moment in the door, turning back to the the time-out table they often shared after a successful code break or theft. He sat down wearily. ANGIE popped up on the projection.

“James, the dismissal bell has rung, sweetheart. Is there a reason you don’t want to return home?” She asked in a programmed supportive tone. “Are things alright?”

“Things are fine at home, ANGIE. Don’t worry. Hey, can I ask you for advice?” He found the words falling out of his mouth. Her generated expression became intent.

“Yes! What’s wrong?” She blinked without needing to. Bucky sighed.

“How do you get somebody that is very proud to let you help them out?” He asked the screen. ANGIE seemed to consider it.

“Somebody that is very proud isn’t likely to accept help,” she said finally. Bucky rolled his eyes. 

“I know that. How do I make him?”

“You cannot make another person accept your love, James.” Bucky twitched at the word 

“Hey, I didn’t say---”

“You just have to love him in spite of his faults and hope his heart isn’t as dense as his pride. Show, rather than tell,” she continued, nodding succinctly. Bucky stared at her for a moment.

“How’d you know?”

“The details of my analysis would bore you, sugar.”

“But you know.”

“I know lots of things,” she said brightly, a stock phrase from the factory settings. “Steven Grant is not well-behaved, but he is good. He is careless, but not unthoughtful, and does not consider himself worthy of much,” she summarized. “And moreover, somehow seems to stare at you in the precious moments you are not staring at him.” Bucky looked around the room wildly, grateful to find it empty.

“Hey, I don’t---!”

“I have eyes in the back of my head, James Buchanan,” she smiled benevolently. “Go home, please. I need to shut down all systems after a security check before I may wipe and go to sleep.” Bucky stared into her, recognizing that she was coded like anything else, but sensing somewhere deep and quiet that it didn’t matter.

“Thanks, ANGIE.”

“Of course, honey. Glad I can be useful. But you didn’t hear that from me. I’m just an electronic babysitter,” she huffed. Bucky frowned, defensive in a way he hadn’t expected.

“Who called you that?”

“I hear most things,” she said, and Bucky was surprised to note some sadness there. “James, there have always been small prejudices against androids and hybrids. I know you and Steven have felt them.” Bucky had never considered that ANGIE felt any kinship with him or Steve because of their hardwire technology. They were closer to hybrids than anyone else in their classes, Steve most of all. Most kids had the wireless chips and embedded tech that looked for all intents and purposes like expensive jewelry, like his siblings had, like he had before he customized himself. Looking anything like a real android was passe. Next to all the shiny accessories the other kids had, Steve seemed like a self-made rag doll. “I hope you will take good care of him. Goodnight.”

Bucky walked the long way home, thinking about it. A message was waiting on his system when he got there.  

<< _BUT REALLY YOU CAN STILL DO MY HOMEWORK FOR ME IF YOU WANT ;) ;)_ >>

He folded his arms, glaring at the screen as he considered a response. He would spend the evening alone, playing away his credits in cheap games, and leaving Steve alone as Steve had previously wished, and tried not to recognize the cheap resentment he felt in that loneliness. He couldn’t yet balance taking care of him and leaving him alone, much less making himself happy by way of achieving either. Taking ANGIE’s advice to heart wasn’t as easy at it sounded; the kid infuriated him when he put up walls. So Bucky took a deep breath and, instead of tearing it down, knocked at it softly, at two in the morning, noticing User: Button was still active.

<<FEELING BETTER? >>

     << _NOT REALLY._ >>

<<WHY DID THE SHIITAKE THROW A PARTY? >>

     << _LEMME GUESS, BECAUSE HE WAS A FUN---GUY?_ >>

<<NO, THE PORTOBELLO WANTED TO HAVE IT AT HIS PLACE BUT THERE WASN’T MUSH---ROOM. >>

     << _UGHHHH DAAADD._ >>

<<FEEL BETTER NOW? >>

     << _SO MUCH WORSE :)_ >>

<<SLEEP. >>

     << _YOU TOO._ >>

It would be a waiting game, and Bucky had time.


	2. Chapter 2

But for all that, to be a teenager is to be impatient, and Bucky was itching to try again. He checked in with ANGIE and she calmly fielded a weekly cry for help that was Bucky describing Steve’s stubborn refusals of his moves towards a closer friendship. The fact that he came over for dinner twice a week like clockwork was a step in the right direction, ANGIE pointed out sweetly, but Bucky’s mounting worry about Steve’s housing situation was eating at him. What if he secretly lived in the basement of the school? Or a shelter? Or he was married with ten kids? Bucky started asking Steve more questions, listening more intently, keeping open body language as much as possible.  

“What are you looking at?” Bucky asked one day when Steve let slip a sigh as he flipped through some images on his projection. Steve froze and minimized whatever it was before looking up at Bucky across from him.

“Is it too late to say ‘nothing?’” Steve asked with a hopeful shrug. Bucky didn’t have to say yes but Steve’s head dropped like he had. “You’ll laugh.”

“I might. Am I allowed to?” Bucky said, and the look on Steve’s face in return charged something of an echo of ANGIE’s warning sticking to the roof of his mouth. “I can’t make you trust me, I know. It’s fine. You can have your secrets, dude, I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s---” The apology caught Steve off-guard and he stumbled over his words to get footing. “I mean you can look. It’s fine,” he said hesitantly as Bucky all but leapt around the table to see. Steve pulled the projection back up and Bucky knew: he was looking at advanced body system mod forums. There were gallery after gallery of exceedingly beautiful bodies seamlessly blended with the latest android parts and systems. Joints of metal twisting like tree roots in gold and silver, neon webbed skin-simile, jagged metal cages where ribs had been. Enhanced, fantastic sexual organs. Bodies like no God had ever made in His image. Bucky swallowed his heart thinking that Steve made that broken sigh over these images.

“Oh, Stevie,” he couldn’t help but say on a soft breath. It felt out of character, this kind of warmth and concern, and a bell of warning rang in his head that he couldn’t ignore. _Your hand, Buck, hold those cards closer, closer to your chest. He’s shown one of his. Don’t ruin it, don’t fuck this up._ He swallowed and veered a hard left from care. “This is--- come on. Get this off your history, you’re going to get flagged for porn or something on the school comm,” he said, waving his hand through the projection as if to banish it. The images scarcely wobbled around him.

“See, I knew it. You don’t get it,” Steve said, pulling up a term paper that served as cover. He idly typed nonsense. “Never mind, I’m doing homework, sit your ass back down.”

“Hey, I’m not laughing! I didn’t laugh,” Bucky exclaimed, defensive now. “Honestly I thought it would be so much worse, wow.” Steve glared at him.

“No. You’re ashamed of me. I fuckin’ knew you’d be.”

“You? No, pal, I’m--- no,” Bucky faltered, worried now he was losing ground. “It’s just this weird--- this superficial shit. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. This rots your brain,” he said dismissively, though his real concern was nothing of the sort. Truly he couldn’t shake the thought of Steve spending hour after hour hating his own body this way. It wasn’t something he could articulate but sunk like a stone.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Steve replied caustically, “it seems superficial when your body isn’t actively failing you, Buck. When you’re fucking perfect.” Hurt welled in his hollowed eyes and Bucky involuntarily took a step back. “I’m allowed to fantasize about whatever I want,” Steve spat, wheeling round to the screen. “My imagination works just fine. Might be the only thing in this busted up meat and metal combo platter that does.” He caught his breath for a second and defiantly brought back up the forum he was browsing.  

A perfectly sculpted young man stared at Bucky with enhanced golden eyes, without focus. A different woman caught his eye as Steve scrolled and Bucky recognized her; she was a big name in the AI rights movement, mostly machine herself by choice and utterly captivating. There were rumors that she was a hacker and it didn’t surprise Bucky for an instant when he thought about it; of course she was exactly what Steve would want, a shining example of a hybrid and a vigilante and a beacon of hope for someone like him. And she was beautiful. She was a mechanical angel. Her lips were permanently pigmented a brilliant red, most of her strong jaw a tech mod itself. Margaret Carter, android poster girl for the bot revolution. Of course.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said quietly after a moment, watching Steve scroll through an endless stream of full body specs and details of Margaret Carter that made Bucky physically ache. “None of my business, I get it.” Steve sighed heavily and dropped his hand to the table, the scrolling halting with his movement.

“It’s okay. You asked,” he said.

“I did,” Bucky relented. “So, umm. What am I looking at?” Steve frowned at him, something hopeful in his tone.

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah. I gotta know what we’re stealing all our money for, right?” Bucky smiled and pulled a chair up next to Steve, whose eyes went wide for a second before with a fluster he pulled up several new windows with a flurry of his hands, conducting the projection with precision.

“I mean, you know who this is. Right? She’s a big deal.” Margaret Carter winked back at Bucky from the projection as she said ‘vote no on Memorandum 41’ and he scowled involuntarily. 

“Yeah, I read about her,” Bucky admitted. “She’s gorgeous, huh?” 

“I mean,” Steve blushed, “yeah, she is. That’s--- yeah.”

“Let me know where you’re registered, I’ll send you two a nice china set,” Bucky said with what little envy slipped through the filter he was trying hard to enforce. Margaret Carter looked on, oblivious.

“Shut up,” Steve huffed. “She’s brilliant, Buck. She’s really outspoken about using mech supplements for optimized health in the military and wants the technology to be made available to civilians. She’s just--- she’s good. Capital G, Good.”

“Uh-huh,” Bucky nudged him knowingly and Steve elbowed him back.

“Shut up! Obviously she’s gorgeous but whatever. She’s a hero.”

“I grant you. Quality dame,” Bucky said with an affected tone. “But what’s with all this cosmetic shit. Rich teenagers. I’m not abetting your petty thievery just so we can make you look like an Apple store mannequin,” he said pointedly, gesturing at the screen prior with the golden eyes. Steve pulled up a few different screens, one of which Bucky recognized as the philosopher-scientist Erskine that pedaled a peaceful future for all the broken and obsolete hybrids that the government was systematically ignoring (like, he hated to admit, Steve.) One gallery was strictly young men with titanium alloy external cheekbones and fiber clavicle enhancements. They were very pretty, Bucky would admit, but hardly practical. Their ‘Before’ pictures were sullen, healthy teens that hardly needed modification.

“I mean, I wouldn’t buy stuff like this, don’t worry,” Steve said. “I’d just--- I’d support the right people. If I had money to blow, I’d just funnel it all to Erskine and watch the goodness trickle down. Might not even hit me, but that wouldn’t be the point,” he said. Bucky nodded; of course it wouldn’t. Steve wouldn’t dare put himself first, ever. It was all Bucky could do to make sure he didn’t come last.

“Do they always do before and after pictures like this?” Bucky asked.

“Half the fun is looking at how perfectly serviceable their bodies were in the first place before they went and bought themselves improvements anyway. The arrogance of man,” Steve laughed. Bucky frowned.

“Is this masochism, bud?”

“Maybe,” he replied, more softly. “It’s fuel. It should be accessible to everyone. You shouldn’t have to buy yourself time. No one should become obsolete and left behind to die.” He continued to stare at the screen but Bucky was only staring at him, this boy with more strength and purpose than his misfit toy body could physically support. 

“You’re so righteous,” he said, instead of the thousand ways he wanted to tell Steve he was worth more than anything money could buy.

“I hate them. That’s nothing admirable. I hate them worse than anything. What I wouldn’t give to not have to rely on whatever machine scraps I can find on the sly, in the trash. I’d kill to be a before picture, these motherfuckers,” he said with such a rush that he kicked into a coughing fit. Bucky slapped him on the back carefully.

“The Puppet who wanted to be a Real Boy,” he said. “Not the cartoon I would’ve picked, but a solid choice,” he laughed. “I can imagine you. Looking like your avatar, huh? Like a superhero?

“Don’t you feel that sometimes, though?” Steve asked, desperately, a light in his eyes that asked Bucky to follow, and he would, if he believed he could. “Like it would be really something to just be totally organic? Wouldn’t you like to run around and just--- have your bones and muscle hit the ground in the sun and breathe fresh air? Kick up leaves? Just be one, whole connected being?” Bucky blinked, imagining it the scene: Steve, breathing freely, a whole person. A field of tall grass. Smiling, the sun, Steve Rogers. It caught him.

“I don’t know where you’d even find a place like that,” Bucky laughed through the thought. “But sure. I think I would live in a tree if you gave me a chance.” Steve turned to him with a sudden ferocity and harsh whisper.

“You would? 

“Uhh, yeah?” Bucky laughed, a furrow of curiosity in his brow. Steve listened intensely. “I mean maybe not seriously, but still. We read all those novels in class about boys who ran away to the mountains or jungles or whatever. That one with the falcon,” Bucky said with a dreamy smile. He devoured those books, though had never admitted it to anyone. They were just fantasy novels; the division of the national parks, the last refuge of the dwindling wilderness, before Bucky was even born meant the slow death of worlds like that, the kind where a child could live in community with nature. Bucky wouldn’t know where to find it if he tried, if he could even travel that freely now that some bizarre android bans had started popping up in some states. Steve eyed him suspiciously. 

“You did the reading?”

“I mean,” Bucky couldn’t tell if he was blushing but he hoped he wasn’t; he had somewhat of a reputation to uphold and lowered his voice. “Yeah. I like that stuff. You know, old school adventure. It’s a nice escape, you know, from the black hole online. It’s quiet,” he said, running a hand through his hair and glancing over at the rest of the class, connected and dead to the outside. The room chimed dismissal and they all began to clock out, chattering about whatever it was they were just doing on the network. Bucky cleared his throat and unplugged from the table, winding the cord around his wrist and clipping it together in its makeshift bracelet. Steve was watching him, a look in his eyes searching and sad. “What? You okay, Stevie?” Steve unplugged with a rattle and jerk, swinging his backpack over his shoulder.

“Come to my house after school,” he said. And Bucky stood rooted there, mouth agape, as Steve was out the door already. He thought he heard ANGIE chuckling softly but her display was dark and fast asleep. 

Bucky found Steve’s megatenement without much trouble; more than anything it was remembering which number to press at the towering compound’s front gate. So many families were crammed into these complexes, once built to house entire company staffs from CEO right down to the pawns, now defunct, and sold to the government as low-income housing solutions. It looked rather like a beehive in an old History of Science text, Bucky thought, the home of little workers that made natural progress possible. As far as the book was concerned, the little insects were not extinct but living in labs. Bucky had ghosted through enough backroom gaming to hear on the down-low that was a lie; it was a popular conspiracy that the bees were all dead and the government had no way of going back. There was no demand left for natural products outside the black market, and with good reason. Making too much noise about apples and coffee in public servers never got anyone anything but docked, banned, and permanently restricted and watched, if they were lucky. The first and only time Bucky got publicly caught stealing credits during homeroom and sent to the school administrator, they marched out the whole band of scare tactics: how little boys like him were arrested and employed by the State as security, ‘recruited’ and indentured for life, erased from the world of their families. He feigned repentance, and learned to cover his tracks better, if not twice.

Bucky keyed in 4508P. Steve’s voice came over the box.

“That you, Buck?”

“It’s the State. Mrs. Rogers, your son has been recruited.”

“Fuck off, Buck.” The tall metal door clicked and Bucky was hit with a wave of warm, stagnant air, of machines without fans and burning dust in the building’s lobby. He promised himself not to show any worry or any pity towards Steve no matter the state of the place; he’d never let Bucky back in if he thought he pitied him, and Bucky rather liked having someone to share things with. When he considered the place, the flutter of hurt over Steve’s face when he said android mods were weird and superficial, Bucky’s insides twisted knots and shook his heart to extra beats. In the elevator zooming skyward he had promised he would love Steve’s home and make a show of it, if that’s what it took. He could do that.

But Bucky’s tune changed when 4508P’s entrance slid open and revealed its barracks within. Steve stood awkwardly in the middle of a multi-purpose compartment, its two bunks concealed in bays within the far wall. A heap of clothes had been clearly shoved off the one sofa. It reeked of rust and bleach and recirculated air. But Steve was holding two ancient connection adapters and a splitter and lit the whole room with his smile.  
  
“You ready for this?” He asked. Bucky swallowed every physical response his body was making about the room, about his concern and useless urge to care for him, and shrugged.

“I dunno, am I?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said without thinking, then amended, “I mean, within reason.”

“Within reason?” Steve challenged with that voice much bigger than his body, the one that made something whiz and pop like a cartoon spell between Bucky’s eyes, and he resented the feeling with a glancing laugh.

“Okay, without reason, too, fuck you,” he responded, slipping off his boots next to Steve’s shoddy pair by the door. “So what is it?”

“You have to let me take you there before I can tell you what it is,” Steve said, glancing at the walls. “So you have to trust me. It’s not something weird.” 

“Oh, sure. You can’t tell me what it is but it’s definitely not something weird,” Bucky sighed, but held out his arm anyway. Steve smiled wryly.

“Do you want a safe word just in case?”

“I’m not gonna fight you,” Bucky shrugged. Steve rolled his t-shirt sleeve over his shoulder, exposing the band of ports in their custom console on his bony arm. 

“That’s a terrible safeword,” he said. Bucky took off his coat and set it on his shoes. 

“Whatever, Rogers, I’m not gonna fight you. If you planned to drag me into deep net to kill me for parts, I’d let you. Wouldn’t be a fair fight.”

“If I was gonna kill you for parts I would have at least bought you dinner first, Barnes, give me a little credit.” Steve finagled the knotted wires in his hands like macrame.

“Gosh, how romantic.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Is this a date?” He joked and it tasted silver in his throat, like a threat. If it hung in the air a little longer than it ought, the other boy blessedly didn’t notice.

“Just you wait and see,” Steve laughed, motioning to the couch. In front of it was a coffee table, just at shin-whacking height, covered in old machines and tangled wire. Three ancient monitors all faced the same imprint on the concave couch, a small dent where Steve obviously camped out. There looked to be an analog holographic display rigged in the center, similar to the tables he and Steve would take over in home room to doodle and discuss new schemes and targets away from their hivemind classmates.

“This is where the magic happens, huh?” Bucky asked. “Quite the set up.”

“Yeah, well. I had to build my own,” he shrugged. Bucky understood; not only was compatibility an issue for Steve but also, obviously, the old-school wiring of his building and the connectivity shared with all the other tenants. It was impressive to say the very least and Bucky swallowed the gush of compliments he was ready to lay at this electric altar.

“Cool,” he said instead, and after a beat, “so where we going?” Steve held up the loose end of the splitter in question and Bucky nodded consent, and once connected, Bucky felt an odd jolt into the blank plane.  

<<STEVE? >>

He entered a global command and his voice echoed around him. It took a moment to adjust to the parameters Steve was running; it felt a little like sleeping limbs but in odd sections of his body as the visual caught up with his physical state, and soon he reached a stasis, a full compatibility with the visual component. His body went into a physical lockdown back in Steve’s apartment.  

<< _BEHIND YOU, BABE_ >>  

The text appeared in Bucky’s view but Steve poked him, or rather his avatar sent a sensory signal that registered as a poke to Bucky, and Bucky winced.  

“Hey, quit it.”

“You all there?” Steve asked, patting him on the shoulders.  “I’ve never had someone else hardwire into my systems before. They’re kind of touchy, I know.” Bucky gaped at him. 

“You mean that could have fried me? _Dude!_ ”

“I didn’t think it would!” Steve said quickly, taking a step back, though there was nothing but empty terrain for him to step back into. “Strong 90% chance of success!”

“Yeah, but still!”

“You’re fine,” Steve waved at him dismissively. “You look great.” Bucky glared, eyes dark over the fold of black bandana that always covered his mouth. Steve's avatar glitched briefly and Bucky felt it in his teeth, a low-tone vibration. 

“I’m hearing a buzzing.” 

“That’s probably me,” Steve said, looking away. “I, uh. I’ve been a little buggy. Even my connection at home isn’t great sometimes.”

“What’s up?”

“It’ll be fine. I just need this one copper piece that’s hard to find, for my Basics pack,” he gestured to the hardware at the nape of his neck. “I don’t know what’s going on back there, but I’ve been getting headaches. I guess you’re tapping into my issues,” he laughed and Bucky couldn’t help but feel an enormous pity in spite of himself. “What’s mine is yours, pal.”

“Are you just--- always hurting?” He asked bluntly. Steve shrugged and somehow no answer at all was worse than anything he could have possibly said. “How much does that piece cost? The one you need.”

“Probably 50 thousand.” 

“Are you serious?” Bucky choked on the idea. “That’s insane!”

“That’s if I try to get it legally, which means I have to register and then wait and all that nonsense so, it’d be a bit more to just--- get it. But yeah, shit’s expensive. And State health services won’t help you pay for it unless you agree to upgrade to wireless and get compatible. A lot of folks aren’t! I’m---” Steve caught himself in an angry spiral and stopped. His voice hushed. “It’s a fucking scam and people are dying.”

“How much more than 50 thousand?” Bucky asked, his voice an echo in the empty plane; no destination had been chosen yet.

“Let’s table that conversation while we’re still in a public space, shall we,” Steve said, glancing about. “We’re going to go on a little vacation, you and I.” 

“Do you have to say it like a serial killer?” But before Bucky could crack another joke the environment shifted and he felt his feet land softly on a yielding plane. Around him, tall trees fanned and towered in glittering greens with violet shadows, trembling with drops of rain in a calm spring shower. The air was cool and somehow sweet, birdsong floating in the spaces between. There was nothing of electricity, of rust or wires, no humming and grinding or processing. It simply existed. 

“Is that breeze?” Bucky stammered, something kitten-soft raising the hairs on his arms or at least simulating it perfectly. Steve sighed happily.

“Yeah." 

“And rain?”

“And rain.”

“What is this?” Bucky asked, and Steve grinned, watching him take it in.

“It’s a forest.”

“No shit, it’s a forest. But we’re not in the forest.” Bucky failed to articulate what about it felt different from any virtual reality environment he’d experienced before. It was almost uncanny, like each individual leaf had been crafted just so, with its own growth patterns in vein and personality. It didn’t feel like it had been coded; it just naturally became. And for all that, something felt off. “How?” He finally asked. Steve shrugged.

“Short answer is I’m not sure.”

“Long answer?”

“Shut up a second,” Steve said without taking his eyes from Bucky. He reveled in watching the scene set into Bucky’s bones, the curiosity settle into calm.

“Are those birds?” Bucky asked after a moment.

“Are you tearing up?” Steve took a step towards him, his feet sinking in the soil.

“I don’t know how this is--- how anyone could write this. Construct this. I don’t understand it. It’s so detailed. It’s just like how the books say.” Bucky knelt and ran his hands through earth and moss, snagging on twigs and little stones, bits of hardened clay and undergrowth that were meticulously placed. The soil itself, however, was not wet. “It’s not real,” he found himself saying. “I mean obviously it’s not real but it’s not fake-real either. It’s too---” 

“Too imperfect. I know. It’s not synthesized.”

“You’ve looked at the source?”

“I’m the source now,” Steve admitted. “I host this copy.”

“In your apartment?”

“No. Fuck no,” Steve laughed. “Guess what it was.” Bucky sat down on a root and ran his fingers over the bark. It flaked off in chips and the scrape was satisfying. “Hey, leave no trace, ya shitty Boy Scout.”

“Is it an old VR gaming environment?” Bucky wondered. Steve shook his head.

“Yes and no. I think it’s a live simulation.”

“Of what? Not a real forest,” Bucky insisted. The rain continued to patter around him, tiny splashes on bright leaves. “No way.”

“No. This place is real, somewhere. But this is a snapshot, I think. It’s immersive but has a fourth wall you can’t break. Honestly I think it’s some kind of miniature but I have no idea why anyone would make a tiny, perfect little forest like this. Probably some kind of museum, honestly. Anyway the copy--- this is somebody’s super-old school class project, and you’ll never guess whose,” he grinned.

“Uh. Your buddy Erskine?”

“No. Close. Howard Stark.” The consonants snapped like twigs and Bucky’s eyebrows shot up.

“No fuckin’ way. I love that guy!”

“Of course you do, everybody loves that asshole,” Steve sighed. “But before he sold out and started working with the State as Chief Technology Asshole he was a little boy playing with VR modules and tucked this cute little getaway in a folder in a folder in a vault in a swamp in the farthest corner of his personal archive. Naturally I found it completely by accident,” Steve grinned. Bucky knew his avatar by heart now, could map it in the stars if he had to, this brightly colored, falsely handsome superjock with Steve’s hair and eyes and the body of a default Adonis. But that shit-eating grin, transcending all physical and technological planes, was all Steve. In this environment, he hadn't bothered with the neon clothing options. He looked comfortable and, Bucky hated to say it, completely normal. _This is what Steve wanted for himself._

“You little snake.”

“I’m not sorry. I come here all the time. No one can find it unless they already know where it is. It’s the closest thing to a church I’ve got.” Bucky looked up at him to see a dreamy faraway look of peace settled on his sharp and lovely features. _And you brought me here. You shared your greatest thing_ , he thought.

“Do you have to kill me now that I know?” Bucky asked.

“You already know all my secrets, my logins, my unhealthy obsession with hybrids,” he grinned, kicking at the dirt. “I’m not gonna fight you.”

“Ah, my ‘everything’s fine’ safeword.”

“That’s like the opposite of a safeword. Although,” Steve had a thought, “this is where we should come, if we get separated, or we have to split while we’re working or get caught or something.”

“Excuse you, let’s hope we never get caught, okay.”

“No, I know, Buck,” Steve hesitated, “but like, ---”

“Sure,”  Bucky cut him off, recognizing the something of worry. He had felt it himself; every new challenge they took on felt more dangerous, more fearsome in spades, than the last. It wasn't always just the elderly struggling to upkeep their digital profiles. The kinds of folks that hired private hackers typically needed privacy for a reason. “We’ll meet here when---

“Just if---”

“If anybody ever tears us apart. If I don’t utterly destroy them for trying. We come here.” The forest seemed to hold them close and safe in agreement.  

“Or any time you need it,” Steve added, ducking his head. Bucky looked at him in periphery.

“Any time I need it?”

“You know. It’s safe and quiet. And we can talk about things here.”

“Like what things?” 

“I don’t know. Whatever we’re thinking about. Nothing at all.” Bucky hummed in approval and lay down under a tree, folding his hands behind his head on a mossy root. He looked up into the canopy as the sound of rain continued like a global hush, quieting him. Steve sat and leaned against the trunk next to him, and they soaked in an unreal peace. They didn’t talk about anything else that day.  

 

art by curious-werewolf [(hi-res)](http://imgur.com/yYreuxz)

 

But they did meet there, even while physically apart when Bucky connected from home, whenever the fights they picked got too rough or the threat too great. They would collapse, laughing, under that favorite digital tree in the pocket-sized forest, after utterly destroying a sputtering old man in a video poker tournament and making off with enough credits to buy Steve a whole month’s worth of upkeep. They regrouped immediately when a client got into it with Steve about his android sympathies, and Bucky only barely dragged Steve away before he totally lost it. It took him a solid twenty minutes of fuming in their private hideaway before he was ready to face the rest of the day's work. Sometimes, they just met there to take a break. But upon accidentally disconnecting the wrong Somebody’s Daughter from a backroom drug ring, they had to bolt and split from a sudden hoard of private security bots, safely finding each other in the forest moments later.

“That was close,” Steve breathed heavily through half a smile. Bucky grunted, adjusting some code on his end that had been stuck to him. He pulled the tracker pieces off his avatar like leeches, carefully and without hiding his discomfort as the barbs had lodged in his skin and irritated his neural connections.

“Too close,” he groused. “I thought that was gonna be small potatoes, Steve. You said shitty teenagers with money. Who the fuck was that? Mafia?”

“Kind of. No. The State, just a little,” Steve attempted to brush it off, plucking some clover from the undergrowth.

“The FUCK? We don’t have the manpower to take on the State, you little shit!” Bucky exclaimed. Steve backpedaled a bit. 

“I know, I know. She’s just some dignitary’s daughter, it’s not a thing! I thought maybe we could see how dense the security was that way without getting--- anyway. We’re fine. I just--- wanted to see how bad. We’ve been taking down these small time baddies and I wanted to know. C’mon. Those guys were--- those weren’t State security. That wasn’t SHIELD, Buck.”

“No shit, it wasn’t SHIELD,” he responded. “I’ve never seen goons like that. That technology was brand new.  And a fucking nightmare,” Bucky added, holding up writhing bits of code that, in spite of his tearing, seemed to reform and continue to make jabs at him. “This is protected in ten ways. I’ve only seen shit this bad in--- decidedly not State-related assholes.”

“HYDRA,” Steve whispered, looking at its red pulsing forms. Bucky continued to wring the dark wriggling pieces and finally stripped it down to soot.

“Yeah, well, if the State is using HYDRA technology then the problem is a lot bigger than two shitty pickpockets can handle,” Bucky spat at him, erasing the tracker debris from the environment. Steve slumped. 

“I was just--- yknow, curious. I'm sorry.”

“Curious, my ass. You could warn me next time, punk. Jesus,” Bucky hissed as he pulled a thick black wedge from his shoulder, glitching out for a moment as he frantically wrote out a patch for himself. Steve instinctively reached out to hold him steady.

“You okay?” He asked, inspecting the gash. Bucky swallowed, reminding himself he was in a simulation. In reality he was sitting in his bedroom; Steve was on his couch at the apartment. Steve Rogers, the puppet who wanted to be a real boy and was utterly incapable of lying even as an avatar, was not holding his hand. His eyes, his real eyes, were not tentatively meeting Bucky’s.

“It’s fine,” he managed to say, though circuits were misfiring totally unrelated to their scuffle. Steve searched his eyes.  

“You sure? Be honest, this is our safest place. Tell me if you’re mad at me."

“‘Sfine, Steve. I’m not gonna fight you,” Bucky said softly, and as if invoking a spell, Steve melted against him and pressed his lips to Bucky’s, tentative as a question, sweet as a sigh. But he suddenly pulled away and the last thing Bucky saw before getting booted and disconnected from the space was a look of terror on Steve’s face in a deep blush. But Bucky was blinking awake, suddenly real and alone and in his own bedroom, though the electric tingle on his lips somehow lingered in echo.

<<STEVE? >>

Bucky stared at his display for a moment before trying to reconnect, but only received errors in return. Time waited and he didn’t breathe, begging for any response. He tried to access the pocket forest again but couldn’t reach it. Instead he was popped into a waiting room, a blank space with a coffeehouse jazz version of “Sunday Kind of Love” playing in the background while “servers are processing your request” flashed, which happened whenever your permissions didn’t match your destination. He was temporarily blocked from the forest. He panicked, thinking he must have looked too surprised or like he didn’t want it, that Steve must have blocked him.

<< _SORRY. I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT WAS._ >>

Bucky blinked. _What that was?_ The kiss or the glitch? Blood rushed around his ears and he heard somewhere far off his mother calling him to dinner. He completely unplugged and disconnected, but the worry stayed with him. Passing a mirror in the hall he blushed at his own shaken, adolescent face. He had no appetite for food, and only once let himself look at the empty chair his mother had designated for her bonus child, that polite little ragdoll from Bucky’s class. Bucky pushed his fork around the plate. I don’t know what that was. The ghost sensation needled at him. _Steve_.

“Hey, loser, you put the food in your mouth.”

“Don’t poke your brother, sweetie. He’s probably worried about school. Jamie, honey, aren’t you getting excited for graduation?”

_I don’t know what that was._

I don’t know what that was?

I _? don’t ? know ? what ? that ? was ??????_

“What was that, honey?” Bucky was jarred from his thoughts. His mother stared back. “You’re grumbling, baby. Did you say something?” Bucky hung his head.

“Just thinking. Sorry, ma.”

“Well. You can always talk to Steve about it, if you don’t want to talk to your poor ancient mother,” she said. Bucky nodded.

“Hope so.”

_  
Then what was it?_


	3. Chapter 3

And though Bucky was dying to ask, Steve wasn’t in class the next day. Bucky tried again to access the forest, from homeroom, and could not find it. ANGIE paged him. 

“Steven Grant is absent today,” she said obviously. Bucky twisted his hardwire idly.  

“Sure is,” he said unhelpfully. 

“Do you know why?”

“I have no fucking idea!” He spat at her. “How would I know what that idiot is thinking at any given moment? He’s not attached to my hip or anything. Like I don’t look down and he’s just there, okay? He goes rogue all the time. I don’t know what that was, like that's an answer,” he repeated, dripping with vitriol, pouring an entire night of lost sleep and scattered breathing, of a nightmare scenario of a lost friendship or worse or love which was worse, into his words. ANGIE frowned and he took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m just tired,” he lied, as he was just nothing, adding, “aren’t you supposed to know? Didn’t his ma call him in sick or something?”

“James,” ANGIE sighed. Her face twitched, as if an override had halted some train of thought. “I am not able to disclose any information about Sarah Rogers. But surely a curious boy would be able to find her.” Bucky blinked. 

“Sarah Rogers?”

“Please keep me informed as to the whereabouts of Steven Grant,” she said sweetly, but she shook her head no, twitching the while. The mixed signal read like a malfunction, and it didn’t escape Bucky. When she disappeared, he connected to the public record. In a warehouse space of file upon file upon ten millionth file, he audibly cursed Steve’s mother for having the most common fucking name in internet history, it felt. He waded through until he found a match. 

Sarah Rogers, mother of Steven Grant, daughter of Grant Philip Rogers and Maura Kielty, had been permanently docked at Country General for the past five years. Her status had been recently changed, within the last twenty-four hours.  

She was currently interred at an unnamed State storage facility.  

Bucky’s heart caught in his throat. He disconnected and stared at an idle screen until dismissal. When ANGIE asked, as he clocked out, if James knew anything about Steven Grant, he could only honestly respond that he didn’t know a thing about him. Walking home, the guilt sunk his shoes into the earth with each step. He had made this about himself when Steve was suffering. Tears stung at his eyes and he fought to keep them at bay.

But they spilled over without ceremony when he found Steve sitting on his front porch with a backpack full of spare parts and machines, looking for all the world like a travelling salesman on his last leg. The boy looked up, small and angry and shuddering, raggedy pieces worse for wear than ever, and Bucky held him together while they both cried. 

* * *

 It was a lucky thing that the house was empty. Steve sat on the kitchen floor, fearful his overheating systems would do damage to the furniture, and Bucky made tea for lack of a better balm. 

“I can’t stay here,” Steve swallowed the silence and Bucky poured water into mugs. 

“You can. You can stay. You’re a wreck.” He turned, crouching on the tile a foot between them, entreating with his eyes. “Don’t be proud, Steve. Not now. Let me help.” Steve turned away from him. Bucky sighed and didn’t attempted to get closer. “I know you’re still processing. We can talk or not, it’s all good. I’m glad you came here.”

“Couldn’t stay home. I can't apply for hybrid autonomy until July and I’d go straight into custody, and I couldn’t go to where she is,” he sniffed. “We owe the State so much money. I can’t even say goodbye.” He trailed off with a shuddering breath that utterly decimated his best friend. Bucky had an inclination where the credits they’d stolen together had been going; he wasn’t saving up for parts for himself at all. So much was evident in his body. He set the tea aside and joined him on the floor, his back against the cabinets.

“You just have to lay low here for a bit,” Bucky said. “My mom will cry with joy for a kid that appreciates her cooking. Honest, you won’t be an imposition.”

“Harboring a fugitive orphan? Absolutely fuckin’ not,” Steve traced lines in the tile. “I’m just going to have to get my own place and hide.”

“With what money? You won’t be able to graduate!” Bucky exclaimed. “You’re not thinking straight. There’s no way you can afford a bed and your own upkeep by yourself. That’s just stupid, Steve. You’re a shitty thief as it is.”

“I’m not hearing other ideas!” They sat in silence for a moment before Bucky said what he’d been thinking since he saw Steve on the front stoop.

“I go with you. We get a place, we make some money freelance. No more personal justice league. Real money. We don’t need to graduate,” he said with some reluctance, thinking of the exact face his mother would make. “We’ll go off-grid entirely for a while until you can surface again without getting thrown into State Child Solutions. I know you know how to disappear,” he said, nudging Steve’s shoulder with his own. Steve looked up at him through the blonde wisps that had shielded him.  

“You’d do that?”

“Of course,” Bucky replied confidently. “I always imagined we’d go into business together after school. We’ll just have to fake some credentials, that’s all. Not like forgery is outside your wheelhouse.”  

“Why are you so perfect?” The words slipped from Steve’s lips like a prayer and sunk into the tile, quiet and ceremonious. Bucky threw his arm around him, pulling him close to kiss the top of his head.

“Someone has to be. Can’t expect your bony ass to do the heavy lifting.” Steve rolled his eyes but he was smiling for the first time in a while, small but sturdy.

“So sweet to me.”

* * *

“So, what do we think, priority-wise,” Bucky said over the lip of his coffee cup. “Swimming pool or exotic bird menagerie? Which is more important for our new house?” Steve considered it.

“I can’t be fully immersed in water,” he said finally. “I mean once we replace my Stark board with something fully wetware compatible, we can SCUBA around the yacht we’ll obviously have, but I’m leaning menagerie for now. Just to keep things simple.” All morning they hadn’t spoken about quitting school, or Steve’s mother, or what happened in the forest, and Bucky felt an odd irritation that the third thing had been lumped in with the others. He couldn’t look at Steve without remembering it, and hated himself for putting that before grief. He shook the thought.

“Great. I’ll be right back.”

With what little money they had, they had left the Barnes household that morning and went house hunting. It took Mrs. Barnes twenty minutes to stop crying, thirty minutes to stop yelling, and an hour to pack them lunches for a week to stick in Bucky’s car. She kissed Steve on the forehead and smacked James on the back of his and they set off. 

Steve sat patiently disconnected at a busy public cafe while Bucky buzzed around online; neither wanted to risk his being tracked or seen by anything that might have Steve flagged for being a missing person. He idly drew pictures on napkins while he waited, trees and flowers, now sitting dormant on an external drive in his backpack.

The distance gave Bucky a little time to think. Decisions had kind of happened without much time for recourse, for clear options much less careful consideration. Time wasn’t exactly working in their favor; without a safe, anonymous connection they couldn’t work. Without work, they had no money, and without money, Steve was a timebomb of parts. He worried how quickly he was willing to drop everything for Steve but it occurred to him without doubt Steve would sacrifice the same without being asked. That thought put an odd spring in his step. Maybe, even if he couldn't explain the kiss, or move forward on that train of thought, he could just be happy enough to accept the unspoken understanding.   

Bucky covered his trail as he went along, knowing that any of the conventional methods of finding housing would be too easily tracked if anyone were watching him (and he always, for safety’s sake, assumed someone was.) So he slinked through a few closed doors and community back alleys until he found a message board tucked in a corner, covered in bizarre notices for all sorts of illegal shit. A solid eighty percent, Bucky didn’t fail to note, were for sex or sex-adjacent activities. A few advertised heavily coded locations for drugs. Bucky sifted through them; a few other anonymous avatars ghosted up to the board and put things up and took them down without ceremony. He made an exasperated sigh and a young woman nearby noticed. She was pinning up a notice for translation services. 

“Rough day at the office?” She said, looking him over. Bucky scrubbed his hands over his face. 

“Not that it’s anything to you but yes, rough day. Can’t find a single apartment listed up here but I’m up to my ears in cheap dick, apparently.”

“What a problem to have,” she replied. “You’ve looked in the real estate listings?”

“No," he said. "I can’t.”

“What’d you do?” She asked blithely, cocking her head to one side. Her supernaturally red hair just grazed her shoulders.  

“Nothing,” Bucky lied, “my cyberlancer friend and I just need a place to do work and it has to be off the grid for professional reasons, that’s all.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding suddenly interested. “Cyberlancers, huh.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky replied, squaring his shoulders. “Professionals.”

“Been at it long?”

“Since this morning,” Bucky said with a grin. “And also I was reading code before speaking English, so.” 

“That so?” 

“Yeah. You a cop or just bad at making friends?” Bucky asked, skimming through piles and piles of notices, deleting as he went. The girl raised an eyebrow.

“I guess I won’t help you, then,” she said with a dismissive toss. “Are you trashing those? You got admin credentials?”

“You tell me,” he said, throwing a wink over his shoulder as a piece of paper vanished in his hand. She rolled her eyes. 

“Great trick,” she said without affect. “One at a time is not going to get you anywhere fast, cyberlancer.” Bucky recognized the challenge in her voice. He looked at her notice on the board, for fast and confidential translation services. 

“Okay, how about this,” Bucky said, and after staring at the looming noticeboard a moment, about a hundred listings vanished at once. “No more competition for you. Shame you don’t want to help me.” The girl blinked 

“What is it exactly you wanted again?” She asked, arms folded tight across her chest and taking a step towards him.  

“I need unlisted housing listings. My buddy is all parts,” he said, looking at his feet without knowing why. “And I need a place he can be safe. Any idea where I could find a resource like that?” He asked. The girl frowned, turning something over in her mind. She looked him over from tip to toe. Bucky assumed she was running a background check, or notifying security. He readied a getaway if he needed one, but the girl didn’t waver.

“You just did,” she said, and to his surprise she wore half a smile. She sent Bucky an address without further explanation and he stared at it for a good thirty seconds before he realized she was gone. He disconnected and Steve was there to wrap his cords without asking. 

“Took you long enough. What did you find?”

“I met a girl.” He slid the address to Steve who scrubbed a tired hand over his face.

“Goddamn it, Buck."

* * *

She was waiting for them in front of the building, which appeared to be a single-unit storefront with a glowing “DINER” sign in the window. Steve immediately took to her; she greeted them from afar by flipping them off. She had a few years on them, maybe, but honestly Steve might have just as easily pegged her as 19 or 39.

“We can trust her, you think?” He asked, adjusting his backpack.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said honestly. “I wasn’t seeing any other fast options.” They stopped a few feet short of the girl and waited for her to make the first move. She focused on Steve, tearing him apart with her eyes. He held her gaze when she met it. 

“Rent to my account at the end of every month, label it ‘projects,’’” she finally said. “We live upstairs. My business partner and I run off-grid and we like it that way. Do not bring home anything that will put us in danger or I will put you in danger. Pets are fine. I control the thermostat. Understood?”

“Understood.” Steve gave her a curt nod.

“You got a name?” Bucky asked. “Or do we just call you boss?” 

“Can’t see the harm,” she said, and she handed Steve the keycard. Bucky frowned.  

“Why’d you give it to him?” He asked petulantly. Steve smirked and followed her into the building as she turned from the question, not even dignifying it with an answer. 

Up a narrow stairway to the right of the diner’s entrance was a simple flat with assorted bare necessities and odd collections. The kitchen had no stove but several hotplates in a line and a toaster as well as several different coffee machines from various eras. There were box fans set up around what looked like a squat, counter-height server, surrounding it in a quaint appliance fairy circle. In an adjoining room a scruffy young man talked non-stop on a headset. The girl waved at him and he made a peace sign at Steve and Bucky without interrupting his sentence. A golden retriever lay sprawled next to him on a futon mattress on the bare floor, kicking around a nest of quilts and pillows. 

“That’s Clint, my business partner. He is a one-man matchmaking service. I will not divulge which one but it’s very dumb, makes good money, and allows him to play God,” she explained rather fondly. Bucky thought he could probably guess which one based on the conversation; the guy had said the phrase ‘assorted niche kinks’ twice now.

“One-man service with a partner?” He asked. The girl shrugged.

“Translation services and security,” she said vaguely. They stood in the doorway a moment more while he finished his conversation. 

“New roomies,” he said with a grin at last, “welcome to our humble abode. I hope at least one of you can cook. Natasha makes good coffee and I make good company.”

“Sure,” Steve said with a smile. “Bucky can cook.” Bucky was too busy feeling some sort of small victory at learning the tight-lipped woman’s first name.  

“Awesome. We can do family dinners!” Clint exclaimed, clenching both fists in victory. “Pup's Lucky. He won’t bother you unless you ask him to, in which case he will love you to death. Samuel, talk to me, I don’t understand your algorithm for shit, my dear, take me through it like a child.” It was clear Clint had switched back to headset conversation and Natasha backed them out into the living room. 

“Communal space, projector,” she said, gesturing at the far wall. “We don’t have a lot of dishes but we get a fairly good supply of fresh food so if you can cook it nice, I give you permission to use it.” 

“Fresh food?” Bucky asked. “How’s that?”

“We have an understanding with downstairs,” she said without breaking eye contact. Bucky rolled his eyes and decided not to ask.  

“Not like we’re particularly legal eagles,” Steve said with a shrug. “I got nobody to tell.” Natasha gave him a tight nod, almost an approval if you stretched the definition just so. Bucky felt inherently wary of her. She didn’t fully trust them, and yet she opened her home almost immediately. A voice in his head told him to count his blessing and ask fewer questions. Natasha, who wore comfortable brandless clothing instead of the sexed up cat suit of her avatar, offered few answers as it was. The closed bedroom next to Clint’s was hers and its sanctity was implied. She pointed out the one bathroom and wash pod and finally came to a narrow door and dark little bunkroom. It had no windows, just an abandoned dual projection station like Clint’s taking up half the room and a similar bare futon mattress across from it. 

“Home sweet home. You can run some extensions if you have your own situations,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the boys. “Given your hardwiring I’m going to guess you know plenty about setting yourselves up.”

“Yes ma’am,” Steve grinned, already dropping his backpack to the futon and sitting down at one of the stations (the larger, Bucky noted with some amusement.) “We’ll make due.”

“Okay. We keep things pretty cold since we’re above a huge kitchen and the servers need to stay cool. You can borrow a blanket or two from Clint, as I’m not guessing you two come with your own linens. I have to get back online. I’ll write you into the permissions but I imagine if you’re any good at cyberlancing,” she said harshly, “you can figure it out on your own.” She disappeared down the hall and Bucky pushed the door shut. 

“Is this okay?” He asked immediately. “We can keep looking. Like if this isn’t okay---”

“Buck, this is great. Our first apartment.” Steve was practically beaming. “We even got a dog!”

“She didn’t mention a price,” Bucky said, easing himself down to flip onto the mattress. It was slightly better than bare floor. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

“I think she thinks we’re a couple,” Steve said, staring up at the ceiling. Bucky measured his tone as carefully as possible. 

“Funny.”

“Buck,” Steve turned on his shoulder to face him, an urgency in his voice. But when Bucky met his eyes, he swallowed it and faltered. “Umm. You sure you want to stay here with me? You could go home. You have--- I mean you don’t have to. You probably shouldn’t.” 

“I’m not gonna fight you,” Bucky said, folding his arms behind his head. He would have otherwise said something foolish, like he couldn’t imagine himself anywhere else. Steve grinned.  

“Our first apartment.” They lay there, considering all that had passed and all that lay ahead, until Lucky nudged the door open with his nose and body slammed his new friends with a hearty puppy welcome.  


* * *

Weeks passed like hours and a family redefined itself. Bucky and Steve took a string of simple, paying jobs as they came and went and as the money slipped under the table it went straight towards rent, towards Steve’s upkeep, and towards upgrading their equipment. Nights were lazy, four pairs of feet and four paws all sitting on the floor around the server tower blinking, trading stories of the workday and drinking old fashioned pop in cans from the chef downstairs. Bucky loved the crisp snap of the tab ripping through the aluminum, the sweet fizz that tickled his nose. He meticulously rinsed them out and stacked them in colorful pyramids around the flat.

“I wish we could get ice cream,” he would swoon. “I had ice cream in pop once.”

“Rich kids,” Clint shook his head and toasted his can to Steve’s. “Gotta put sugar in your sugar in case it isn’t sweet enough?”

“It was awesome, you don’t know,” Bucky scowled at him, taking a long pull of cola. You really couldn’t beat the old fashioned pops for flavor, he thought. “And this from the guy who feeds his dog whatever I make for us, you wanna talk about decadence?”

“He doesn’t like those little cricket pellets, can you blame him?” Lucky planted his snout in Clint’s lap on cue.

“Me neither,” Natasha grimaced as she painted Steve’s nails with a thick red lacquer, the kind teenagers used in old movies. Bucky flicked at his pop tab and ignored the pang of envy as he watched them, her languid strokes and his eyes half-lidded with calm. It struck him as sweet, four kids too-talented at technology and playing with relics of yesterday in their little apartment above an honest to god diner. Clint continued bragging about the latest tweak in the matchmaker world program his man Sam was perfecting and Natasha hummed vague approval. Occasionally Sam stayed over in Nat’s bed and nobody asked. Steve gushed about Dr. Erskine or Margaret Carter in turn, exciting developments in android rights and obsolete technologies. It was a Wednesday night calm. They’d retire to bed, huddled together against the cold, close by necessity rather than choice, though Bucky let himself believe exactly and no less what he needed to get by with pleasant dreams. The morning would start them again. It was a day-to-day and he loved every precious one of them. 

So of course it could not last


	4. Chapter 4

On a Friday morning they woke up to a request from a new client seeking an estimate on a hacking project and they arranged to meet him online in a public game room. Bucky and Steve had modded the terrain and set up some security measures so as not to be recorded or cached and waited for the user to meet them.

“Bet you a hundred credits he wants us to delete history,” Bucky said, and he began a game of racquetball. The ball appeared hovering next to his hand and he took a swing with his bare hand at the corner of the space. The ball propelled against the wall with a deafening slam and Steve returned his serve, sending it against the opposite wall. 

“I won’t take that bet,” he said, hopping out of the way of the hologram’s ricochet. “That’s like nine out of ten old men clients we get.” Bucky laughed, and they volleyed as they waited. 

“ _‘My wife can’t know about this.’_ ” 

“ _‘I didn’t know what I was accessing, I swear.’_ ”

“ _‘They’ve taken thousands of credits!’_ ” 

“ _‘She said she didn’t have any malware!’_ ” When a middle-aged man in a simple suit appeared in the room and squealed to avoid the projectile, neither stopped their play. He cleared his throat. 

“The cyberlancers from the ad?” He asked, barely audible over the boys’ raucous laughter and the slam of the ball against the terrain walls, impacts exploding with bright lights and casino sounds as point values soared on a digital scoreboard. 

“At your service,” Bucky exclaimed, turning swiftly to backhand the ball into Steve’s corner. It hit two walls before darting back.  

“Hey, that’s an illegal hit,” Steve complained. Bucky stuck his tongue out and they volleyed again.

“How come it’s only illegal when I’m winning?” He grinned. Steve shoved him over. 

“You’re not winning, you’re cheating!”

“If I could, my name is Edwin Jarvis and---” The man tried to cut in but found himself in the line of fire again and flattened himself against a wall. 

“I wouldn’t have to cheat if you weren’t such a disaster!”

“Your face is a disaster!” The man winced as the ball whizzed around him in the small space. He wavered addressing them.

“I really thought the two of you would be less---” 

“Handsome?” Bucky cut him off with a grin, catching the ball midair and ending the game. The scores flashed red on the walls. “Absolutely not. That’s a cyberlancer stereotype. Button and I strive to break the mold in every possible way.” Jarvis breathed out with a pointed glare. 

“I was going to say unprofessional,” he snapped. Steve shrugged.

“Well, that checks out, because you don’t have to hire us.”

“Sure. Your competition was more than happy to call us professionals for the right price,” Bucky lied through his teeth. Steve grinned; he loved it when Bucky wheeled and dealed. Jarvis blanched.

“You’re working with HYDRA?”

“No,” Bucky replied casually, “but now we know who to call.” Jarvis flustered.

“For fuck’s sake---” He gathered himself. “Gentlemen. Please. If I could just--- I came here to ask a few questions, not to buy a used car.” Bucky took a step forward in defense but Steve held up a hand to stop him. 

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Jarvis?”

“I’d like to ask what’s on yours,” he asked, pointing specifically at Steve. “Why are your fingerprints on Hydra databanks?” 

“We don’t leave fingerprints,” Bucky said cockily, elbowing Steve. His partner, however, faltered.

“Which databank?" 

“Button?” Bucky looked at him, this giant gaudy jock who suddenly looked two feet shorter and twice as guilty as usual. “We don’t leave fingerprints,” he repeated. Jarvis folded his arms.

“Project SERUM.”

“Button.” Bucky wheeled on him. Steve shut his eyes.

“Aw shit...”

“ _Button_.”

“I may have poked at that!” Steve relented. “A little. Erskine released all his patents to them! You know that’s suspicious.” He nearly pleaded as Bucky grew hot with rage. “He would never do that! He would never sell them to a private investor, he promised he wouldn’t! I don’t believe it!”

“Yes, well, as it happens, neither does SHIELD.” Bucky and Steve both froze and turned to him, the avatar in a clean black and white suit. “And to your credit it was very difficult to find you, so I wouldn’t ride him too hard for leaving half a trace. I am excellent at finding people.”

“How arrested are we,” Bucky sighed. Steve stepped forward with his chin in the air, taking full responsibility. 

“None of that was Bucky’s doing! If anybody’s getting arrested, it’s me. He had no idea.”

“Mr. Button, to be perfectly blunt, we want to know how the hell a civilian got that close to those banks in the first place.” Steve gaped.

“What?”

“We found traces of you in their security further than we’ve been able to get. What precisely are you doing that we’re not?” Bucky turned to him, also curious and more than a little angry. Steve pulled a piece of environment closer to sit down. Jarvis did the same. Bucky continued to pace idly, irritation building.

“Are you--- asking nicely or are you demanding officially?” Steve asked. Jarvis folded his hands and leaned forward. 

“I simply have questions. I’m not looking to lock you up.” 

“You left fuckin’ tracks.” Bucky grumbled as he walked, fidgeting with the black handkerchief over his mouth. “If he can find you then Hydra can find you, Steve.” Jarvis glanced up at him.

“I cleaned up after him, not to worry.”

“Very kind of you,” Bucky scowled. “Why didn’t you tell me about this shit?”

“Last time, I---” Steve looked at his shoes on the glowing terrain.  “Last time you got hurt. I was fine by myself. Fingerprints aside.” 

“We’re having a serious talk when we get home.” Bucky heard himself, words coming straight from his mother and out his own mouth. “Ask away, Jarvis, I’m sure Pink Panther here would love to tell you how he went spying without me. I got nothin’ to say.”

“Why are you interested in the Erskine patents? Do you have a potential buyer?” Jarvis asked. Steve worried his lip.

“No, I just--- you know. I’m interested in obsolete technologies and I think Erskine is going to be a big help in the android rights movement, that’s all. So I wanted to see where they were being held when I read he sold them off. Which I don’t believe for a second, by the way.” Jarvis nodded, his avatar processing Steve’s statement.

“That’s a relief. We seem to be on the same page.” He offered a calm smile which Steve returned, but Bucky remained skeptical.

“The State wants those patents? Why, so they can make it totally inaccessible to the folks who need it and finally control hybrid healthcare capital?” He was fiery here on Steve’s behalf; he even parroted Steve’s exact phrasing about the very real fear that one day the State would make it almost impossible for people like him to survive. Jarvis adjusted his cufflinks.

“SHIELD is operating slightly apart from the State in these matters. I’m afraid I can’t divulge the nature of the project. I was sent by Ms. Carter to determine whether or not you would be fit to join our initiative.” He looked at Bucky specifically. “I’m not sensing that you’re entirely on board.”

“Margaret Carter?” Steve’s eyes were cartoon hearts and Bucky felt his stomach fall to the ground. He was pretty sure back in the apartment his whole body convulsed.

“No way. No Hydra. Steve, no.” 

“We’re in. We’ll go. Send us.” Steve was on his feet shaking Jarvis’s hand. To Bucky it seemed he was handing his life over right there in front of him, without even asking if it meant anything to anyone else all the same (and it did, it did all too much.)  

“Steve, fuck, calm down. You have no idea how dangerous this is! You can’t just trust a guy for name-dropping, that’s insane.”

“She’s on our side, Buck. This is huge! This is amazing. Margaret Carter wants those patents! She should have them! We can get them. With Shield support I know we can get them.”

“Against Hydra? You’re out of your mind. You saw what they can do! What they did to us, and that was just some low-level goon cussing us out for breathing!” Bucky remembered the black shards, the sticky, biting trackers, the screaming in his ears as he frantically disabled their efforts, and worst of all the horrible sinking thought that Steve had to endure the same, not knowing until they were safe again in their forest retreat.

“Buck.” He used his softest voice, the one he reserved for their shared goodnights, and it only made Bucky more angry. “You’re the best hacker I’ve ever seen. You can find a needle in a haystack from thirty yards.”

“Don’t butter me up, Steve,” he spat. “This is dangerous. This is so dangerous. You’re in no shape---”

“This is a chance to prove I am!” The words echoed in the space, louder than the slam of the racquetball and their laughter moments before. Bucky swallowed hard and folded his arms, having nothing more to say. Jarvis got up and smoothed his suit pants. 

“Take your time and think about it. I’m going to leave you with a card and expect an answer to Ms. Carter by the end of the day.” 

The guy was gone and a thick vanilla business card was in Bucky’s hands. He passed it off to Steve with a knowing look as he signed out of the room, and they met back up in Steve’s forest. Steve looked down at the card, letters simply pressed in formal black. It was Margaret Carter’s personal contact ID. He ran his fingers over the embossing. He was no longer his default cyberlancer avatar in flashy spandex, just the simple version of himself he always brought to the forest. Bucky pulled the black handkerchief from his face and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. 

“You really want to do this.”

“I really want to do this, Buck. I have a feeling. I just know this is what we’re supposed to do.”

“I have the opposite feeling.”

“Why? You know we could be part of that team. We talked about joining SHIELD at school. You wanted to then.”

“It’s not about SHIELD. I just---” Bucky’s sigh sunk him to the ground. The rain fell around him on the dry ground, though the birdsong had the decency to fall quiet. “You’ve already decided to go, haven’t you. Doesn’t matter what I say.”

“Of course it matters." 

“But you’ll still go,” Bucky asked and answered. Steve searched his eyes and sat next to him.

“I’ll still go,” Steve said quietly, finally. “It’s the right thing to do. There are lots of folks who have it worse than me.” Bucky knocked the back of his own head against the tree.

“Then I have to go, too.”

“You don’t,” Steve said. Bucky took his hand. He stared out into the trees, their promise of sanctuary, and knew he was signing their precious peace away. He could, and would, do worse for Steve, if he only asked. 

“Yes, I do.”

* * *

He saw Margaret Carter in a dream that night. He followed a howling fugue that hung in the air like fog, a heavy church organ song with circuitous themes that wove around him and back through themselves to sit in careful rows of dark oak pews. Bucky dipped in and out of colored light splashing from the stained glass towards flickering candles, red in their offering rows. A woman draped in veil lit another candle in the line, curls of purple smoke from the match. She turned and Bucky knew her face, its skin a luminous simulacrum that betrayed the glowing machinations beneath. Her eyes met his, sharp and sad. The candlelight quivered a reflection on the metallic stretch of her jaw.

“The altar demands,” she said, and her voice Bucky placed as ANGIE’s, his unconscious having no reference to pluck. He looked to a stone slab that stood empty in the space.  

“For who? For Steve?” He asked, and his words were swallowed. She folded her veil like a veteran’s flag in a careful triangle and placed it in his hands. It was his avatar’s handkerchief, then, heavy as lead. “For me?”

“Sacrifice is a choice. Show rather than tell,” she said. He felt a drop and reached out, calling the only name that felt right, and felt something slip from him, tear from his chest, as darkness followed. And he woke up like a shockwave, back on the sorry futon mattress, so tangled in Steve’s limbs that he jarred them both. 

“Buck? You okay?” The glow and flicker of machines in the darkness threw a halo on him and Bucky involuntarily reached out to his face. Steve smiled sleepily. “Just me,” he said. 

“Just you,” Bucky said. He didn’t want to tell Steve what he saw. Instead, he fell on old habits, and he ran his hands over a soldered piece of metal under Steve’s ear. “What’s this one?” He asked. Steve huffed a laugh; when Bucky couldn’t sleep he would tell him every piece of him that wasn’t human like a catalogue of parts, all their makes and models and customizations, until he drifted off between specs.

“That there is a Samsung Marigold 2.0 card, and an audio adapter that I found in one of those horrible dog trainers.”

“Where’d you find it?” 

“Dumpster dive,” Steve smiled. “Crown prince of the trash empire that I am.”

“You are,” Bucky parroted. Steve’s brow furrowed.  

“Sure you’re alright? Is this about SHIELD? Listen, Buck, if it’s going to keep you up---” 

“What’s this one?” Bucky poked at a panel of lights just under Steve’s decolletage. “This the one I’m risking my life for?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, his voice a hush. “For people like me.”

“This one,” Bucky repeated the gesture. In the morning they would report to Margaret Carter, and Bucky didn’t know what followed. He kept his hand there and followed it back to troubled sleep.

* * *

Their instructions were clear if lacking: they were to report from separate, assigned locations with secure connections and await further detail.

“Where’d they send you?” Bucky asked as he put on his jacket outside the apartment. Steve adjusted his backpack, extra parts and adapters coming with him in case his new position didn’t have proper connections for him. 

“Top secret. If we know anybody else’s location we might accidentally reveal it,” he said, a worry in his voice that didn’t escape Bucky for an instant.

“If anything happens---”

“I know where to meet you,” Steve said, looking up at him. “Don’t worry. Once you and me get in there, the dream team will be complete. Candy from a baby.”

“Sure,” Bucky said. “A heavily encrypted, merciless murder baby with no regard for human or android life. No sweat. Let’s go get that candy.” They hugged briefly and parted ways. Bucky was to connect from an abandoned office building on the other side of town. On a floor full of cubicles a specific hard wire connection had been set up at what looked to be an arbitrary desk. The iridescents above flickered with age. Bucky was eager to get back to Steve. He activated the projection screens and untied his hard wire to connect. The white of an empty grid flashed in his field of vision and by the time he keyed in the meeting place he was fully immersed and up to speed. He stood outside of what looked like a medieval tavern, some kind of VR gaming environment. He absently adjusted the black bandana covering the lower half of his face and waited. The wooden door swung open with a childish creak and the torches with their poorly rendered firelight cast shadows on a very large man with a thick, copper mustache.  

“Margaret Carter?” Bucky asked in deadpan. The man stared unmoving just long enough for Bucky to consider apologizing when suddenly he split into a booming laugh and clapped Bucky on the shoulder, hard.  

“You wish, kid. Call me Dum-Dum,” he said, holding out a sturdy hand to shake. Bucky accepted it, squeezing harder than necessary. The guy had a good three inches on him in most directions, built like a brick wall with a sweet disposition that didn’t seem to match. 

“Bucky.”

“Bucky boy, you’re right on time. I heard you can break into anything with your eyes closed.”

“Can’t imagine where you heard that,” Bucky replied, and relief warmed him to the core to see Steve had beat him there, already chatting with a couple of other guys around a wooden table. 

“Are we here to destroy a powerful ring or what,” Bucky huffed, taking in the room. “Which one of y’all is the hobbit.” For a moment it occurred to him that none of these men (if you could trust their avatars) knew what either he or Steve looked like on the outside. Steve smirked. He looked anything but a hobbit. He’d abandoned his bright signature look for a sort of navy seal, cargo look. In truth, Bucky himself had opted for a more subdued appearance for this affair, but to see Steve’s avatar, that matinee idol sturdy like steel and twice as pretty, well, he reminded himself twice to focus. The other fellows all seemed to know each other, already comfortable in the space and in their array, and Steve motioned for Bucky to join them. Dum-Dum stayed posted by the door. 

“Buck, this is Dernier, Morita, and Jones. They all work for Margaret Carter.” If Steve was trying to keep the stars out of his eyes he was failing. Morita held out his hand. 

“Nice to meet you. Jarvis tells us you’re one of the best snipers in the cyberlancing business.”

“If he knows that then we truly are shit at covering our tracks,” Bucky said, but he couldn’t help but smile at the compliment. “Button’s the tactician. I just do what he tells me and watch his back.”

“Oh, uh,” Steve flustered for a moment. “So, they assigned me a new handle since, uh. They thought maybe HYDRA’d be listening for it. So I’m the Captain now.”

“Because you have a penchant for booty?” Bucky replied without thinking. Steve went pink. Morita laughed. 

“No, because he’s leading the charge. He’s gotten further in those databanks than we’ve been able to, and Carter seems to think he’s got what it takes. So what Cap says, goes, my friend.” 

“Well, that’ll be refreshing,” Bucky said with a smirk. “Guess I’ll stick with Bucky, then.” Steve shouldered him as he slid onto the stool next to him. There were papers spread all over the table. “So you gonna tell us the plan or are we waiting on the rest of the team?” 

“This is the team.” A clear, British AI answered him, and Bucky turned to find it belonged to his nightmare, and that feeling of slipping just beyond Steve’s grasp returned. Margaret Carter took the air from the room and Steve scrambled to his feet. She smiled. “At ease, Captain. I’m very pleased to have you and Bucky on board. If you’ll both join me for a moment?” She gestured to a door behind the bar. Steve followed her and chanced a look over his shoulder at Bucky that was a mix of panic and shear elation. It was Steve’s face, still, but fuller, with more gravity, but still that bright and childish screwball from their outside world shone through somehow. Ms. Carter shut the door behind them.  

“Ms. Carter, I just want to say we’re both big fans of your work and---”

“Peggy,” she said with a smile, and leaned only slightly on what looked to be some kind of shapeless cask or barrel, a poorly-devised prop in this world. “And I must say the same. Having done some research I was pleased to see you both have a history of, shall we say, privately funded justice. And quite a bit of black market parts trading. Account sabotage. Fraud.” 

“Upkeep. You understand,” Bucky said coldly. Steve blushed furiously. 

“Nothing nobody didn’t deserve, ma’am.”

“You’re good men. I am only made more confident you are assets to this team,” she said, the calculated tone of her voice unnerving Bucky. He stole a glance at Steve and was all the more harried to notice how immediate his devotion was laid out without hesitation.

“We’re grateful for the opportunity. The cause is very dear to me, your cause, that is---” Steve faltered. “The care available for older model hybrids and androids is appalling. It’s murder. Erskine has always been clear about his intentions. He has methods of universal upgrades. We can all benefit from that progress. That kind of equal access--- it’s the only logical step for the android rights movement. Your movement. By keeping the classes so stratified, the upper class---”

“Captain, I am moved by your passion,” Peggy smiled brighter than before, her perfect painted lips a cupid’s bow. “It’s a shame SHIELD could not have found you both sooner.”

“We didn’t have a lot of options,” Bucky said vaguely. Peggy’s eyebrow arched subtly.

“I never would have been recruited out of school,” Steve shrugged, clarifying. “Unfit.”

“A testament to the ineptitudes of the standardized test measures in place for young people looking to serve their country. I’m proud to have you.”

“Why’d you bring us in here?” Bucky asked finally, when a moment of loaded silence had passed while she and Steve seemed unable to unlock eyes. Peggy suddenly turned to Bucky, her brown curls and red sweetheart dress swishing a moment behind, suspended. 

“This is a dangerous mission. I wanted to offer a final opt out away from the rest of the team, with no pressure or presumption. You understand the gravity of the mission.”

“What exactly is this mission?”

“Reconnaissance. Retrieval if the opportunity arises.” Bucky felt uncomfortable searching her for tells; she didn’t seem to have any and frankly it wouldn’t surprise him if they’d been programmed out of her.

“Of what?”

“Erskine,” Steve answered. “You think they have Erskine?”

“I do not. But your optimism is refreshing. Gentlemen,” her tone shifted abruptly. “There is a great deal of trust on the line. You are civilian. I know you historically to be mercenary and reckless, but efficient. If I were you, I might think this move desperate. And it is. The relationship between SHIELD and the State is no longer recognizable and the evils of HYDRA are everywhere. There is no luxury of a second chance once they know our aims.”

“You can count on us ma’am. We won’t let you down,” Steve beamed, absolutely engaged. She gestured for them to return to the bar. 

“Mr. Barnes, a moment.” His real name caught Bucky rightly off-guard. Steve met his eyes with concern but Bucky shrugged him off. He watched Steve return to the men, and turned back to her.  

“Ms. Carter?” She folded her arms and exhaled, more tired than any android Bucky’d ever seen. Her glance fluttered after Steve, feathered dark lashes equidistant on lined lids in the fashion of the day. 

“You’ve some experience with HYDRA?”

“Enough,” Bucky replied, and he did nothing to hide his bitterness. “Enough to know that their lowest goons are better at the game than I’ll be in five years, and not because they’re clever. They have better weapons. I’ve heard they’ll erase your entire existence and clear your clock in reality before you even can disconnect. They’re a class of evil I don’t even understand. Steve thinks you hung the moon. I think this is happening too fast to be smart and you wouldn’t be sending boys to the front that you couldn’t lose.”

“I’m sensing concern,” she said bluntly. Bucky nearly laughed. 

“No shit, ma’am.” She put a hand on his shoulder and Bucky could hear the church organ, smell the incense. He froze at her touch.

“For yourself or for him?” She asked. He hadn’t bothered to wonder; he left a note on his desk for his mother and that was enough to close that chapter. But he had no answer for any life after alone. It didn’t exist; he wouldn’t even try. Nothing without Steve.

“He’ll die for you and I’ll die for him. Sound good?” He shook her off and followed Steve back into the tavern, Peggy frowning in his wake. She straightened and followed suit, giving no outward appearance to the men of the conversation that just happened.  

While she briefed the team, Bucky watched Steve’s face. He animated like nothing Bucky’d ever seen before, equal parts excitement and righteous anger. This was his dream coming true, a dream he never thought to pursue: his chance to save the world. They were outfitted with an arsenal of resources, and every man had his own specialty and niche brilliance. They were as prepared as ever they could be. A smash and grab, Steve had joked. But if you had asked Bucky to repeat even three words in a row from the last hour he could not have done so; the only order he processed was to have Steve’s back, cover him, follow his orders even if he didn’t know what he wanted. Do what it takes to keep Steve Rogers safe. Nothing new under the sun. 

He did just that. And though Peggy knew little of their emotional history, she wasn’t altogether surprised when only five came back.


	5. Chapter 5

It was Steve that came bursting through the door first, black leeches and shards through him like St. Sebastian, and still he stormed the room.  

“Captain, you’re injured,” Peggy said, but he turned swiftly back to the door. Dum-Dum and Dernier followed and kept him from leaving.

“You’re messed up, Cap. And you’re covered in trackers.” 

“Bucky’s not here,” Steve cried. “He must still be there, we have to give him cover so he can get out, we have to---”

“You have to sit still so I can disable these so they don’t fucking kill you, boy,” Dernier hissed, pulling at the shards with little precision. Steve flickered and glitched in and out as he tried to struggle free. 

“Didn’t you hear me? He got in! He’s alone!” 

“You are falling apart, god damn it!” But Steve clocked Dernier in the face and disappeared, connecting sluggishly to where he thought Bucky would go, the only place he thought to look. But his forest was empty, silent but for the looping rain patter on silver leaves. He stared down at the empty spot beneath their favorite tree, the spot surely he thought Bucky would be. Steve shook with exhaustion and a dry sob heaved through him, followed by a second wind of rage. He went back to the tavern, limping. All four men jumped to their feet when he came through the door.  

“Captain! Where did you go?” Jones immediately helped him to the table. Steve sighed heavily.

“Listen. Patch up and we’re going back in.” 

“There’s--- we can’t, Cap.”

“Am I giving the orders or not? We can’t leave him there!" He demanded, nothing registering but hurt and fear. "You shouldn’t have dragged me back here!”

“What happened to you and Bucky in the tunnel?” Jones attempted to keep a level tone and Steve took a breath, remembering. 

“He--- we were almost in. They came at us from all sides. We were so close, and I was pushing through. And I got shoved out.”

“You took a direct hit?” Jones asked, and Steve shook his head, eyes tightly shut. He could still see Bucky's hand as he fell out of reach. 

“No. Bucky shoved me out. He was in the tunnel.”

 “Jesus Christ. What tunnel?” Dernier asked. He was seated at the far end of the table now, far from any potential outlashes. Steve wildly recounted.

“We got past the second line and it was a tunnel through to the bank, a passageway. You didn’t see the tunnel?”

“No, man. No tunnel.” 

“I know where the breach is now. We’ll go back and cover him.” Exhausted though they were, there was no arguing with him, and against Peggy’s advice they went back to where the databank had been. There was nothing but scarring, the smoldering wounds of a terrain that had been recently cleared. Steve became frantic.

“Where else? We have to have other leads. You must be tracking him,” he confronted Jones, who for all intents and purposes had taken on navigation duties. Jones shook his head.

“We lost him when we lost you. We thought you were both gone when they started clearing. They were literally tearing apart their own shit to keep us from getting further. I don’t know how he managed to get you out. Goddamn heroic.”

“If he’s still inside, there’s a chance he’s working from there now,” Dum-Dum offered, absently nursing a tear in his arm that was probably just as sore in reality, thanks to neuro-realism. “There’s a chance they didn’t---”

“Kill him.” Steve cut him off, hands ghosting over the traces of the space. There was truly nothing of any consequence left behind, a few strings of trash code here, bruising where terrain had been manipulated. _No Bucky_. Dum-Dum sighed.

“Right.”

“Cap, we can’t hang around here.” Morita pulled him up, and he was numb enough to be led. “If they have him, they have him. If they don’t, he’ll come back to you. But standing here is asking for trouble. We need to regroup. You need to go home and recharge. As soon as Carter has a lead you’ll know. We’re not giving up on Bucky or the mission.”  

Steve told himself that, like a mantra, as he went sleepless nights slogging through the worst parts of the deep net looking for traces of HYDRA. Bucky was nowhere to be found in the location he’d been sent. He was MIA on both planes. Natasha left cans of pop at the threshold, leaning and watching as Steve raked himself over the coals, tearing through whatever resources he could get his hands on. She and Clint kept an eye on him in turn as the days passed, lending a hand here and there with tech repairs Steve was neglecting.

“You haven’t slept.”

“Bed’s too big,” Steve said wearily, and the three words spoke a greater volume than he intended. “I keep thinking he’s going to walk through the door. Every time I get a hint, an idea of where they might be, what they’re doing, it slips through my fingers. I can’t keep hold of him.” Those words cracked in his throat and he yanked his connection, dropping his head into his knees. Bucky’s workstation remained empty. Natasha wrapped herself around his shoulders and he remained stock-still. “Why would he do that? He just---”

“He did exactly what you would have done.”

“That’s not true.”

“Steven Fight-Me Rogers, he beat you at your own game.”

“He hasn’t beaten anything. I’ll find him. I’m finding traces,” he assured her, and he assured himself. “I’ll find him.”

* * *

Delirium came to Bucky with surprising ease. HYDRA did to him what a reckless child might have done with a hated doll, taking pleasure in the heartless tears and strains on his body, instilling a sense of worthlessness deep in his brain. They wasted no time in wracking his memory for information on SHIELD, what little had been shared with him of their mission, their tactics. They had no use for file after file after, byte after byte, of space dedicated to the nuances of a school mate, Steven Grant Rogers, but met much resistance in clearing the memories away. He bled and shook as they carved away, with sharp and uncaring precisions, what they did not need from him, an Asset.

The Asset held fast to odd scraps they could not get: lichen on the side of a tree that covered where he had carved four initials, SR+JB, the snap of aluminum can tabs, red, white, and blue neon in odd streaks, bright, angry blue eyes.

HYDRA sent him on missions periodically, search and destroy his only objectives. Tearing security code was a second nature from a previous life. He received no praise, though occasionally he would conjure the voice of a young man telling him to hang on. When the Asset inquired about the boy, he was met with more resistance training, taught to work around it. A man pursued him, he was sure, a man in red white and blue, and the Asset dropped breadcrumbs, just enough not to be punished, just enough to catch a glimpse of the man, once in a while. He did not tell anyone. He held fast to what he had, and instead took it upon himself to answer these questions that nagged with his own skills. He delicately poked in systems restricted to him in moments he was alone until he found his own file.

And that night, the first in what may have been years or centuries, he dreamed. He saw the boy. The boy was made of tin like a character in a fairy story, bending at hinges, creaking and rusted. He held out one mechanized hand and the Asset was surprised to see when he reached out his own, it matched, a shining silver metal, and when they intertwined there was no telling one from the other.   
  
In these dreams he began rebuilding, reconstructing hope. And together with the specter of a boy of tin he planned an escape.  
  
"Show me," said the boy. And the Asset was ready.

* * *

It would be another two weeks before Steve heard from Peggy Carter again, but it was a glorious respite from the dwindling supply of straws he continued to grasp at. She sent an urgent, cryptic message with only a location. Steve didn’t waste any time; he connected and wove a serpentine path to find it, hoping to shake the watchdogs who had begun to suspect he was poking the wrong bears. But this space felt different, even to the touch. Steve felt the immersion like a cold blast; it hit and drew the air from his lungs sharp and swift without revealing its intent. He stood suspended in a soundless fog, the swirl of code around him pulsing its baptism, swallowing his calls as he attempted to see who else was in the space. He saw tracks like ghosts, touches and tears and movement that he recognized, and his heart beat in his own ears. The space swelled a sort of red, like someone had ripped through in a rage and left a purposeful. As a gesture Steve mended a few random strings, just as a matter of habit, feeling sorry they had been caught in the crossfire.  

“You shouldn’t be here.” The voice was run through something of a hazer, bass buzzing ominously, but Steve recognized the lilt beneath the ice instantly. He jerked toward it, to find Bucky paces away. He stared at him with cold eyes. A leather muzzle had replaced his biker bandana, and the heavy HYDRA uniform was unmistakeable. Steve choked as his imagination made leaps and bounds through his fear. 

“What are you doing, Bucky? What happened?”

“And who the hell is Bucky?” He said, his hand scratching through the terrain like a great panther, tearing at code recklessly. It sounded foreign on his tongue, a new word. It was clear now to Steve he had no username, just a series of numbers. Steve took a worried step towards him.

“Don’t fuck with me. Please, god, don’t do this to me, Buck. It’s been weeks, I’m so happy to---” Bucky took a step back as if to leave and Steve panicked. “Hang on, just tell me what happened. I can help.”

“I don’t have time. You can’t be here when they find me,” he repeated. The words echoed in Steve’s ears. “You need to leave.”

“Not without you. No fucking way, Bucky. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“User Button, leave or I will have to lock you out or worse.” Bucky flung a piece of environment at him and Steve only barely dodged. 

“I’m not gonna fight you!” Steve cried desperately. “Buck, I’m not gonna fight you. Just talk to me, stay with me just thirty seconds, I don’t care if they’re watching you. It’s just me. Help me find you. Where are you outside, Buck? Where are you?”

“Not here.” Bucky looked at him almost desperately. “You got what you wanted. That has to be enough for now.” Steve couldn’t keep himself from lunging forward, hoping just to touch him, to try something or anything, and realized as the room faded from him that Bucky was suddenly not alone. Five HYDRA sentries were closing in on the man in black, weapons raised, and Bucky held his hands aloft in surrender, locking eyes with Steve just briefly before the scene vanished in a firestorm of sound. Steve was booted from the room entirely, a generous thing considering HYDRA agents typically never took the time to be polite. Steve tried every trick he knew, trying to get back, but Bucky had put up impenetrable walls, specific in the ways Steve did not know how to break. He slammed his fists on the barriers before frustration drew him to the tavern to tell the others what he’d seen, where he’d been, conceding he needed help. Peggy was waiting for him, with Dernier and Morita. Dernier slid a dopamine patch to him with a mug of beer, one for show and one for sedation.

“You do not want my opinion, I think, but you are thinking it all the same,” he said in low monotone. Steve huffed and wearily accepted the patch. 

“Yeah. I don’t want your opinion---”

“He would not let you find him outside. If he were alive. And if he were not, and I do not think he can be after what he has done and what you have seen, no reason still to look. A waste of time.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dernier. Honestly. Shut up.” Steve held his head in his hands. It wasn’t until Peggy began rubbing circles on his shoulder that he crumbled to tears. “I did this to him.”

“No, darling, he is a fighter. He has been very brave,” she comforted, and Morita placed a heavy hand on his other shoulder.

“Cap, I’m not agreeing with the way he said it but Dernier’s right. Bucky’d never let you get to him if he thought it would endanger you. And it sure as hell seems like it would now, if he’s wearing the wrong uniform.” 

“I don’t care. Do you think I care how dangerous it is?”

“He knows you don’t. That’s exactly why.”

“God damn it--- God fucking shit.” 

“Does that mean you agree?” 

“What does that mean, to say ‘you got what you wanted?’” Dernier thought aloud. Steve slammed his fist on the table.  

“I said shut the fuck up, okay? He meant that I get to--- I’ve joined you guys, I’m fighting for my cause, I got what I wanted. I lost him but I got what I wanted. Okay?” He sighed heavily, running his hands through his hair. But Peggy tapped her fingers.

“Captain,” she hesitated. “The reason I sent you that address is because SHIELD received copies of the Erskine patents this morning from an anonymous party. He made himself very easily trackable, which seemed to me rather a red flag, if not asking to be found by his superiors soon after.” She knit her hands. “I’m almost disappointed my suspicions were proven accurate. It appears to have been a sort of kamikaze.”

“He gave--- how did he get them? He just dropped them off?” Steve’s mind boggled. “What the fuck! What did he--- What---” 

“We got what we wanted. And Bucky has fallen on the sword. It may be that he is so immersed within their politics that he could not extract himself by any other means, and doing so would only put you in danger, Captain.” Peggy explained, no warmth to her machinated voice and no effort to hide it.“ Morita dropped his head, understanding, and Dernier tilted his glass so the last drops of beer ran a ring around the bottom. 

“Open and shut.” 

“No.” Steve rejected the idea outright. The brows of his avatar furrowed so deeply that his head ached. “I need to see those patents. Whatever he gave you. Might be a clue, something encrypted.”  
  
“Captain,” Margaret Carter’s voice tightened, something more of a command than a request. “Having completed the objective, this initiative will disband. I understand your personal loss and am deeply grateful for User Bucky’s sacrifice. But it does not do to dwell on impossibilities. He will be remembered for time immemorial by the android population as a hero. Our work continues without him.” She left a brief kiss on his cheek and Steve felt a tide rise in himself so fast it was a miracle Peggy disconnected and vanished before he squarely connected a fist with her jaw. Morita caught his arm, sunny face saddened.   
  
“Cap, we’ve lost a lot of good people to this cause. It’s a long road. I’m sorry, buddy. Take a little more time, if you need it, but can can’t afford to lose you too,” he said. Steve shook him off.   
  
“You just did.” Steve yanked himself from the tavern.   
  
Like every other decision that had been the most important of his life, Steve found he made the choice without thinking and without hesitation. They had Bucky, were using him, destroying him, and just as Bucky’d done so many times without asking, without expecting anything in return, Steve jumped into the line of fire. He knew of a game room some young HYDRA recruits used, a public space. Disconnecting in the apartment, tripping over the depression-fueled detritus in their bedroom, he grabbed his backpack and like any other morning, went to school.

* * *

ANGIE was required to notify admin of Steven Grant’s login, but she was a buggy, older model, and if anyone asked how or why she elected to do nothing, she might simply blame her obsolescence, her overwhelming workload, a moment of confusion that caused her to look the other way when he met her eyes with his own, with a sadness she could not measure. She might even forget he had been there altogether, if it came to that, if they asked, and they would ask. She might take a coffee break just then. There was a first time for everything.

* * *

Steve knew how to cause a scene; it was the one thing Bucky loved best about his horribly reckless style of cyberlancing. He could stand in a crowded room and conduct it into perfect chaos, he could find trouble in an empty terrain. So when he marched into the HYDRA-dominated public game room loudly claiming that he had Erskine’s patents and wanted to be a double-agent, he garnered a fair bit of attention. He sat down at a poker table, garish red white and blue in sharp contrast with so many shades of black.   
  
“Did y’all hear me? I used to work for SHIELD. I’m sick of their shit. I want Bucky back. I’ll make a trade.” The young mercenaries blinked and exchanged glances.   
  
“The Asset?” One asked.   
  
“You are looking to become like him, is that it?” Another said, running a hand over his closely cropped hair.   
  
“The Asset,” Steve repeated, assuming. “Where is he?”   
  
“No longer employed,” the first replied.   
  
“A traitor,” the second. Steve held eye contact and spilled thousands of credits on the table: a bribe.   
  
“You released him?” He asked, hopeful and keeping a rage at bay. The talkative two snickered. A third put down a pair of jacks. A fourth slammed his hand down in frustration as credits transferred.   
  
“He has been put to pasture, User Button,” said the last with a grin, purely cosmetic scars decorating his face with experience he likely did not have. “When you fuck up as bad as that sack of meat, you are wiped and you are expelled. You are stripped.” Steve’s heart fell to the table.   
  
“Stripped?” He asked. The second boy laughed.   
  
“You’re looking for him in the wrong plane, Patriot Man. He couldn’t connect if he wanted to. Your boyfriend is impotent now.” The table erupted in laughter; Bucky had been permanently disabled. Steve would have to find him on the outside, the hard way, if he only knew where to look. As the pieces fell together Steve snapped into action. The walls suddenly flashed red and froze the scene, HYDRA rookies scrambling in a panic as they realized what he’d done. From his connection in a public school he was able to report and shut down the game, trapping them like flies in the web waiting for security to take care of the mess.   
  
Steve kicked himself out of the room, a trick Bucky had taught him. As he wrapped up his cords and left the library, ANGIE called out to him.   
  
“Another red box for your file, sweetheart,” she said dully. He smiled back at her. “Did you find your good samaritan?”   
  
“Not yet,” Steve said as he left her behind. “But I know where to look.”   


* * *

Steve Rogers knew no religion beyond his trees, and he could recite their scriptures by heart. They neither grew nor withered with time, constant in their states, a moment of natural balance. It was a pleasing stasis. For this reason Steve recognized it instantly when he turned the corner into the natural history wing of the central city Museum. There was not a single leaf out of place, no false attempt at re-creation. He saw now that the lights came unnaturally from a grid above the canopy, spotlights in the ceiling fixture that shone through the leaves like a natural brightness in a spring storm. The sounds of rain and friendly song piped in through speakers, but Steve felt no breeze, no sense of calm, until his eyes fell upon the man slumped on the exhibit’s bench, a baseball cap drawn low over his eyes, layers of scrap clothing covering him like a traveller. His sleeves rolled up to reveal frayed and fried pieces, parts torn from their homes, his hands trembling slightly on his knees. It all but broke Steve on his feet.   
  
“He just made a carbon copy,” Bucky said suddenly, sensing Steve behind him a few paces. “That little shit Stark. He liked it so much he just took a picture.”   
  
“He added weather,” Steve replied, ignoring every want his body demanded, every question he had. “He saw what it could be.”   
  
“I’m not complaining. If not for him I wouldn’t have been able to find you again. I can’t remember our address,” Bucky said, turning to him with a hollow laugh. “‘Bout as broken as you are, now. They did a pretty thorough job.”   
  
“You idiot,” Steve exhaled, and he couldn’t stop himself. “You fucking idiot. How could you do that?”   
  
“Kept thinking about how happy you’d be when Erskine fixed you. I’m not sorry, kid, I’d do it again. You want me to? Until every part of you is better and happy.”   
  
“No! Fuck! You’re so stupid, I’m---” Steve slammed himself next to Bucky on the bench, hands over his face to muffle the admission, shield him from his own honesty. “ _I’m_ so stupid. You’re the only part of me that is worth anything. Okay? I don’t care about anything else. I never did. I wanted you to be with me, I wanted you to stay. Please don’t ever do anything like that again. Please don’t leave.” He wove his arms around Bucky, burying his face in the boy’s chest. Bucky exhaled, a mechanical rattling in his lungs like a horrible windchime. After some time holding him, Bucky’s fingers, a cold metal, grazed over a patch beneath Steve’s ear.   
  
“This is a Samsung Marigold 2.0 card, and an ear canal adapter from a dog part. Explains why you don’t like when I whistle.”   
  
“You remember.”   
  
“Some things.” He held Steve’s jaw in his hands, trembling slightly still. “They couldn’t take everything.” Steve melted into his touch, giving him permission with his eyes to say, to do anything. Bucky replayed the moment he’d kept safest, the one locked into his heart far from HYDRA’s pins: he leaned to match Steve’s lips with his own, to fit back together what had been broken apart. Steve felt the breeze again, swam in the patter of calm rain and the rush of blood and electric pulses flooding the coldest parts of him, alive, young and able, strong for the first time.   
  
“Let’s go home,” Steve said after a suspended moment, the word a warm hush on his own tongue. Bucky shook his head.   
  
“Give me another minute,” he said. “I want to remember this one, too.” He wove their fingers together. “Besides, I’m sure I owe someone rent after all this time.” Steve couldn’t help but laugh, tension finally released like a crack of lightning in the air.   
  
“We’ll figure it out.” Steve may have rattled on, then, options and causes and ideas for a future, but Bucky was happily transfixed on their two hands together, broken differently.   
  
“Fits perfectly,” he said absently. Steve blinked.   
  
“Were you listening to a word I said, Buck?”   
  
“No. My hearing must have been damaged in the process. Tell me again.” He kissed away Steve’s irritation, and with it faded all the uncertainty and worry of every question between them. There was only the sound of rain.


End file.
